Levi Patel

Perched high above rolling hills and a typically spectacular New Zealand coastline lies a hand-built studio in which composer, producer, arranger and songwriter Levi Patel hones his craft.

It’s easy to imagine how, from this place of quiet perspective, Patel’s gentle, ruminative compositions have been inspired to flow into the world and establish him as a truly unique creative force.

From a foundational expression of intimate and contemplative guitar and piano composition, Patel layers worlds of richly harmonic strings and delicately crafted textures for a remarkable range of creative outputs that vary from film soundtracks to collaborations with soundscape artists, pop stars and robotic instruments.

Since 2013 and across two EPs and two albums, Patel’s solo works have amassed tens of millions of streams and listeners across the globe. In 2018, he travelled to George Lucas’ esteemed Skywalker Ranch to work with Academy Award winning sound editor André Fenley (Fight Club, Jurassic Park) to complete his soundtrack for Lucasfilm director Rayne Roberts’ debut short film It’s Snowing Outside.

The past five years have seen Patel expand the scope of his work to produce, co-write or feature on songs by the likes of Message To Bears, Alayna, Jeremy Redmore and Rhian Sheehan. While in 2020 he made full use of his software engineering education in exhibiting a prototype robotic musical instrument at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image.

An avid admirer of Chinese culture and self-taught Mandarin speaker, Patel has fostered an impressive following there; to the point where the country has become half of his streaming audience, with viral videos on social platforms Rednote and Douyin leading to features and interviews on Chinese news and radio.

Now, the voice behind Patel’s modest spectacles and quiet demeanour is shared with the world through his upcoming album Sailing on the Light of a Passing Star.

It’s an evolution that Patel himself could barely have imagined three years ago, but after undergoing an intensive regime of vocal development and endless lyrical iterations, his first singer-songwriter album has arrived as an intimate, ethereal travelogue through the journey from heartbreak to hope.