Cellist Oliver Coates performs “Love” from Mica Levi's soundtrack to the film Under The Skin
Oliver Coates is a London based cellist, composer and producer who has worked with artists and musicians like Ilan Volkov, Mira Calix, MF Doom and Steve Reich. In this video, he performs “Love”, from Mica Levi's soundtrack to Jonathan Glazer's 2014 film Under The Skin.
“The microtonal strings and electronics of her [Levi's] hypnotic score are constructed with both clinical precision and emotional honesty,” says Frances Morgan, discussing Levi’s soundtrack work in her cover feature about the Micachu And The Shapes founder in The Wire 372. “As Johansson’s character [in Under The Skin] starts to perceive human empathy, the sonic mood shifts in a cue titled “Love”. Its relative warmth makes it no less uncanny, as those wavering strings, now major key and surging, oscillate between real and synthetic emotion like MDMA coursing through the nervous system.”
“The “Love” music is supposed to be quite ecstasy driven, quite teenagery,” Levi told Frances Morgan. “If she’s really feeling human stuff [for the first time], that’s druggy… it’s like a rush. I was thinking of blood rushing to your face.”
Coates’s performance was filmed at Florence's Hand Signed festival at Sala Vanno – a 15th century refectory hall in the city's Santa Maria del Carmine – in February 2016.
Oliver Coates’s new album Upstepping is released by Prah on 13 May.
