Listen to Mica Levi’s surprise-released new album ‘Ruff Dog’

Gaia Writer

Mica Levi is best known as a film composer these days, having done scores for Under the Skin, Jackie and, recently, Steve McQueen's Small Axe series, but they haven't given up on indie rock. Micachu & The Shapes morphed into Good Sad Happy Bad with Mica turning frontperson duties over to keyboardist Raisa Khan, and now here's new solo album Ruff Dog that dropped out of nowhere today.

Ruff Dog is noisy and atmospheric with nearly every instrument and voice on the album sounding overdriven, bleeding into the red. It's the kind of sludge treatment you think of with My Bloody Valentine or Dinosaur Jr but in a singer-songwriter solo artist kind of way. "One Tear" and "Wings" are dreamy and beautiful, other tracks are in King Krule territory, and the shortest song on the album features the longest title: "A plain clothed Jimi Hendrix drives me to Newcastle. For some reason the trip will take 3 days and he is going to do it for £150. He drives really smoothly and only listens to one album which is by someone with Joy in their name."

Says Mica: "a lot of pixels later there was a huge surge in frequency and some tiny clouds of knowledge burst into rain during the dress rehearsal for the collection of a lost wav file. in this moment the other clouds parted and a ray of sunshine shone onto input 1 and 2 on the audio interface - the screen brightness dimmed and instead there was a long 6 hour recording session split into 2 days in which they quit smoking and decided to live in the song. after the break the words might rhyme or come out dusty. everlasting they left the phone call."

With the album, Mica also released videos for "Wings" and Pain." Watch those, and listen to Ruff Dog, below.