Listen to Mica Levi’s Surprise New Album Ruff Dog

British composer and mercurial pop artist Mica Levi has released their first album under their own name. Ruff Dog is an 11-track collection of songs self-released by Levi. Check it out below (or on Bandcamp), along with videos for “Wings” and “Pain.”

The following explanation of Ruff Dog, reproduced here in its entirety, can be found in a press release:

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.

In a similar vein, one of the tracks is titled “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. Joy’s music is covers of classic rock songs but with all the edge smoothed off. We arrive in Brazil and I impress someone because I say obrigado. The same person asks me to find them an intern. I don’t think I can but I try. I am nervous in the girls changing room and play trap songs loud off my phone.”

As well as releasing a scatter of music across genres in recent years, Levi has scored a number of feature films, including Monos, Jackie, and Under the Skin. This year, Levi scored a short film by esteemed photographer Nan Goldin. They also released an album with Good Sad Happy Bad, a reshuffle of the group once known as Micachu & The Shapes.

Read more about Mica Levi in “The 50 Best Movie Scores of All Time.”