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Under the Skin

Film music / Minimalism & contemporary composition · 2014

Under the Skin

Mica Levi

Under the Skin · 미카 레비

Why listen

Programmed sustain and unstable string movement give small recurring shapes strikingly different functions.

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English editorial edition

Album story

Under the Skin makes unfamiliarity out of duration as much as volume. Thin string movements gather and slip against one another; a short melodic outline does not retain one emotional function whenever it returns. Comparing the extended Lipstick to Void with the later Love reveals how much can change without introducing a large supply of new material. A small figure and a sustained background can become a whole changing environment.

Mica Levi’s music for Jonathan Glazer’s film appeared as a twelve-track album in 2014. In a direct BFI interview, Levi described combining MIDI strings with real strings, flute and percussion. The artificial surface is therefore not evidence that everything is electronic, just as the presence of bowed sound does not imply an untouched orchestral performance. Programmed duration and human movement coexist within the same palette.

A small shape in a long frame

After Creation, Lipstick to Void expands the opening to more than six and a half minutes. The recurring material Levi described as a capture melody changes character rather than remaining a fixed signal. Its outline can stay recognisable while the sounds around it alter its weight. The long span invites attention to proportion and persistence instead of a procession of fresh themes.

Long surfaces, short passages

Drift also approaches seven minutes, but the later tracks do not all share that scale. Bedroom lasts about ninety seconds; Bothy is shorter still. These compact pieces between longer spans prevent the album from becoming one uniformly dense block. Without a singer or familiar beat directing every turn, differences of duration give the sequence a readable shape.

Warmth does not close the record

Love occupies the ninth position, not the final one. Its sustained harmonic surface is followed by Bothy, Death and the much longer Alien Loop. That ordering matters when the score is heard as an album: a warmer passage does not settle the whole structure. Further changes of length and density remain. The music can make that movement legible without requiring the listener to reconstruct every film scene.

The album through its tracks

Compare the second track’s extended motif with the ninth track’s sustained harmony, then continue through the three remaining pieces.

  1. Lipstick To Void

    The second piece opens a roughly six-minute-and-forty-one-second span after the shorter Creation. As its compact melodic shape becomes recognisable, the sound surrounding it takes on greater importance. Change need not arrive as a conspicuous new theme: persistence and thickness can alter the effect of material already present. Levi’s description of a capture melody gives the repetition a function beyond neutral decoration. Heard as part of the album, the proportions are equally telling. This long early track is followed by the much shorter Andrew Void, so its scale establishes one extreme that later pieces can compress or revisit. Duration becomes part of the composition’s expressive means.

    Reference · BFI direct Mica Levi interview: composition and sound palette

  2. Love

    At about five minutes and ten seconds, the ninth track turns attention toward the surface of a sustained chord. Levi’s explanation of warmer harmony as a human feeling offers a useful contrast with the capture material. Yet this is not the record’s resolution: the short Bedroom precedes it, and the compact Bothy immediately follows. The longer span takes its shape partly from those neighbours. Knowing that programmed and played sounds coexist also makes sustained duration an interesting musical property rather than simply a background effect. Three tracks remain after Love, allowing its warmth to function as one contrasting region inside the album’s continuing sequence.

    Reference · BFI direct Mica Levi interview: composition and sound palette

Listen next

Continue with Jonny Greenwood’s There Will Be Blood to compare another film score shaped by contrasting orchestral and chamber textures.

There Will Be Blood ↗
References & editorial note

Written for English readers. Album facts are referenced below; listening suggestions are editorial interpretations. AI-assisted editorial review; not independently human-reviewed.