He was talking about spirituality, love, and the release from judgment, but he could have just as easily been talking about Mica Levi’s music. The English songwriter/composer/producer’s work glides between sumptuous elegance, chunky lo-fi strangeness and startling outsider pop. They’re able to take something nakedly homespun and make it feel elevated, and to take something huge and still render it as intimate and personal. Whether they’re scoring films like Under The Skin or The Zone of Interest, jamming on a washed out electronic loop or penning a sideways indie jam, Levi’s music conjures a field of unrestrained, exploratory play, where boundaries are blurred and where nonsense makes sense. There’s a special kind of artist - The Shadow Ring, Alice Coltrane, or No Neck Blues Band, to name a few - whose work defies simple commodification, but when you meet them on their terms it all comes into focus. That’s when obsession kicks in, and soon enough it’s hard to remember why you’d ever listen to anything else. Mica Levi is exactly such an artist.

On Sunday, Sept 29th, Levi headlines a show in The Ruins, joined by Still House Plants and claire rousay. All three artists draw you into worlds of uncanny beauty. Ahead of the show, here are five standout works from Levi’s sprawling body of work.

Micachu & The Shapes - Turn Me Well

Before embarking on a solo career, Levi fronted the art-rock trio Micachu & The Shapes in the late aughts. The group hit an indelible sweet spot between earworm songcraft and leftfield noise, and it’s here that Levi’s gift for locating fascination, even beauty in ugly sounds first emerged. The group’s use of a vacuum cleaner became a common talking point, and it dutifully makes an appearance on “Turn Me Well.” But listening back 15 years later, what’s most compelling is the way Micachu & The Shapes blur the world of raw electronic production and live performance, making music that lands halfway between a track, a song and a sculpture. This song lands with heartfelt honesty, weird specificity, and a rambling efficiency. It’s a hit, and if you don’t believe us, just ask Björk. She premiered the video on her YouTube channel, which is about as ringing of an endorsement as you could ask for.

Mica Levi - Under The Skin OST

The 2014 release of Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin was a breakout moment for Levi. Although they had been turning heads in indie circles, Levi’s skills as a trained classical composer hadn’t yet been put to explicit use in any public context. But when paired with Glazer’s elliptical, startling and unnerving sci-fi body horror, Levi launched into the stratosphere and delivered one of the most outstanding scores of the last 20 years.

Some obvious parallels can be drawn to the Ligeti and Bartok works used by Stanley Kubrick in The Shining (and 2001, and Eyes Wide Shut… he’s a fan), but Levi tweaks those influences to make something all their own. The post-war trauma of mid-century atonality and the bold gestures of expressionism that fueled Kubrick’s selections are lovingly shepherded into the new millennium. Levi marries a seasick sense of dread with cosmic awe and their knack for a rooted, jarring physicality.

At the time, Levi cited taking a cue from string samples in rap hits. “I was kind of inspired by strip club music,” Levi said, providing an ironic but eerie  background for Scarlett Johansson’s alien predator whose human skin covers something more mysterious. They could have called it a day with those creeping textures alone, but Levi gets some genuine hooks in. This movie came out a decade ago, and even if you haven’t seen it since its theatrical run, you’ll still remember the gliding, ascending string motif. To this day, it’s the audio equivalent of a shiver running down your spine.

 

Micachu - Feeling Romantic Feeling Tropical Feeling Ill

Best-named album of the decade? Fight us. The tryptic that is Feeling Romantic Feeling Tropical Feeling Ill came out right around Under the Skin, as Levi was breaking away from the band format of Micachu & The Shapes. Picking a single, standout track is fruitless - the whole record plays as a hazy suite that, as described, drifts from submerged longing, through verdant sonic environments and into queasy dis-ease. But even these three distinct themes bleed together. Everything’s happening in different degrees all at once. Originally released on Demdike Stare’s DDS label, Feeling Romantic was reworked for vinyl a year later, its true form remaining mercurial. This is Levi at their most porous, exploratory, aggressively unfinished. It’s captivating.

Tirzah - "Tectonic"

The long-running creative partnership between UK alt r&b singer Tirzah and Mica Levi is one of those pairings that’s so good you hope it never ends. Levi has been a constant presence across all of Tirzah’s material, from the first single “I’m Not Dancing” through her most recent LP trip9love…???. Their entire shared discography is worth your time, so consider “Tectonic” more of a sample than a gem.

This moody single from Colourgrade draws on the dank menace of Bristol’s famed trip hop scene, using synthetic pan pipes (a Levi favorite), ungainly low end and jarring sound design to pull you into the undertow. Tirzah’s signature mumble rap sits front and center (you can hear her lips smack in between lines), while Cobey Sey’s backup vocals are reverberated to sound like he’s in the sewer. Levi allows the elements to sit together with plenty of breathing room. Although it’s drawing on the language of club music, this isn’t tooled for sound system impact. Instead of throttling the dancefloor, Levi foregrounds imagination, scene setting and sonic storytelling.

 

Mica Levi - "slob air"

Levi’s new single, “slob air,” just came out this summer on London's revered Hyperdub (home to Burial, Laurel Halo, Loraine James, and many more). It’s a languid, aqueous submersion in orchestral strings reminiscent of Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy.” Over 12+ minutes, "slob air" sways in the breeze, subtly shifting the focus but never making a hard turn. The track refracts baggy, Madchester groove, shoegaze euphoria and understated downtempo through a queer lens. Fans of Wolfgang Voigt’s Love Inc. alias should not sleep on this.

The video is a hazy, lazy semi-POV of an afternoon skateboard through London on a slightly overcast afternoon. There’s a quiet intimacy, even a tinge of erotic longing. Once again Rumi comes to mind, this time the end of that same poem:

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

Mica Levi, Still House Plants and claire rousay play Sunday, Sept 29th in The Ruins.