Mica Levi – Blue Alibi

Renowned musician and film score composer Mica Levi has dropped a surprise new album for the second time in as many months. ‘Blue Alibi’ follows ‘Ruff Dog’ — which, in December 2020, was the first solo record to be released under their name. The experimental releases follow a BAFTA win and an Academy Award for Best Original Music, for Levi’s work on the films ‘Under The Skin’ and ‘Jackie’ respectively.

‘Blue Alibi’, while a more restrained affair than ‘Ruff Dog’, feels similarly experimental in style and form. Just as the prior release comprised a canon of lockdown recordings, so too does ‘Blue Alibi’ feel like the warped offshoots of a grander project. Light on percussion and heavy on atmosphere, it’s a moody collection of lo-fi treasures that seems wholly befitting of the strange period we are living through.

The record features collaborations with a multitude of artists, including Yung Lean, Brother May and CURL — the London label and collective to which Levi has been a regular party for several years. The murky synthesizer instrumental ‘Monk’, meanwhile, is an offcut from Levi’s score to Alejandro Landes’ 2019 war drama ‘Monos’. Further highlights include the disorientating, delay-heavy ‘Between’, the solitary guitar arpeggios of ‘Waves’, and fuzzy, spoken-word opener ‘Whack’.