The compositional polymath Mica Levi, back on Demdike Stare's imprint with her soundtrack to Phil Collins-directed short anime film Delete Beach, further showcasing her unmistakably original blend of virtuosic synth work, neo-tonal harmonies and lightly distorted guitar riffs. Her tools may remain a hallmark from score to score, but the ability to find fresh new ways of incorporating them into a broader, larger-than-life sound palette the keeps her at the forefront of her discipline. Delete Beach double pack may be expensive, but it's an astoundingly high-quality package, featuring two 10'' plates in a gatefold sleeve, and also shipping with a booklet containing wonderful stills from the animated movie. We're going to pass over to the label to give you the low-down on the project - sometimes we feel it needs to come from the source, and this beautiful package is one of those occassions.


"Following on from the maverick pop auteur and film composer’s European Film Award-winning score to Under The Skin, and her Jackie soundtrack, this is Mica’s first musical accompaniment for animation, by revered designer Marisuke Eguchi, animated by STUDIO4ºC.

Delete Beach is a sci-fi anime set in a near future where carbon-based energy is outlawed. The film supposes a paradoxical scenario, one where fossil fuels - the ostensible accelerator of humanity’s progress and decline - become energy for the toil against state oppression and enforced inequality. In doing so, it resonates with anime’s strong tradition of exploring eco-feminist themes and power dynamics, both socio-political and technological.

Using a signature palette of dissonant strings and combustible electronics laced with skeletal percussive treatments, Levi paints a series of sweeping backdrops to the short’s blend of classically-schooled anime and up-to-the-second CGI designs. The central Delete Beach theme, a diaphanous section of airborne synth-string contours and charred guitar distortion carved in pirouetting turns-of-phrase, appears in Japanese and English-narrated versions and an Instrumental mix.
They are divided by the beat-driven Interlude 1 and interlude 2 parts, recalling a mix of string slashes mixed with opiated chopped ’n screwed rhythms comparable to Micachu & The Shapes deconstructions of London Sinfonietta.After her work underlying and exploring complex characters in Jackie, a biopic of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and the alien-woman metaphors of Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin, her Delete Beach soundtrack follows suit with an impendingly tense, viscerally affective sound that reflects and conveys a sense of independence in the face of uncertainty, of a struggle against imposed forces or control systems.

It’s another beguiling testament to Levi’s role as one of the most original and eminent composers of her generation."

Delete Beach (Japanese)

Interlude 1

Delete Beach (Instrumental)

Interlude 2