For the past ten years Matakana-based producer Levi Patel has shared his soothingly ambient instrumental compositions with the world. He’s met with some success, amassing millions of streams of Spotify and having his music feature in Lucasfilm’s ‘It’s Snowing Outside.’ In 2024, a new side of Patel’s artistry is revealed – we hear his singing voice for the first time on his third album, ‘Sailing On The Light Of A Passing Star.’ Nur Peach spoke with him for NZM.

“I never actually planned to start singing, or even to write songs,” Levi Patel confesses. “It’s kind of a cliche but it was after a breakup where I started writing just notes in a journal. I’m always playing some music, and then these melodies started to emerge that I knew would suit vocals.

“I almost accidentally started attaching some of the words I’d been writing to that, and then got really inspired by creating these songs, and then realised that songs require a singer. At that stage, I could sing a little bit, but I didn’t like the sound of my voice.”

That was four years ago. Help arrived in the form of legendary Kiwi singer Suzanne Lynch, whose vocal coaching was recommended by a friend. They began regular lessons at Lynch’s Auckland home. 

“Because I’ve produced a lot of artists and recorded a lot of singers, and I knew exactly what I didn’t like about my voice, and what I wanted it to sound like, and what I hoped I could find, I went to Suzanne with that goal, and then gradually got closer and closer.”

“At that time, I had never heard her music, but my parents got excited when I said who I was going to meet. Amazing person. I don’t know how old she is now, but she’s had a long, long career. Whenever I see her, she’s bouncing around and she’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I just got back off tour.’ ‘Oh yeah, I’m in the studio later on so we’ve gotta do an early lesson today!’” 

Patel’s vocals on the album are warm and gently emotive, perfectly suited to the backing of his signature ethereal production. The whole effect is reminiscent of artists like Sleeping At Last and carries the same emotional weight. Highly personal in subject matter, the album was aptly described by Jeremy Redmore, who wrote Patel’s release bio, as ‘an intimate, ethereal travelogue through the journey from heartbreak to hope.’

“The songs are almost in chronological order on the album,” says Patel. “I don’t feel like I chose to put them in chronological order. I feel like I just chose to keep them that way. Because I was personally going through this journey, as I was writing, the songs evolved with my feelings and where I was at. It’s not a straight road, but the evolution overall was heading on one direction. I guess it naturally became its own journey that mirrors mine.”

The poetic album title, ‘Sailing On The Light Of A Passing Star,’ was inspired by the lead single Gravity.

“The key image in that song is of two stars moving past each other in space and being influenced by each other’s force. A lot of these songs are quite heartbroken or sad, but also hopeful and grateful at the same time, so I really liked that metaphor of even though you pass, you leave each other, but you’ve still left an influence on each other’s lives.

“So I kind of just ran with that sci-fi sort of image. The hardest part was that I knew what image I wanted to capture in the album title, but for a long time, the only ways I could describe that were super nerdy. It captured the idea but it didn’t capture the feeling of the music.”

Gravity proved the hardest of the songs to write.

“Some songs come very easily, but this one, I had to take the scenic route,” he laughs. “It went through different forms, and it always had the same idea, but sometimes the music wasn’t quite right, or the lyrics had the right meaning but not quite the right feeling. The moment it came together, I was actually running around Tawharanui Peninsula, and I realised there was absolutely no one there. It was just me in this beautiful place. It’s a bird sanctuary, it’s nice forest, and on either side just beautiful beaches and rocks. I realised I was the only person there running along this ridgeline, and somehow the chorus lines just came into my head, especially the ‘two stars out of phase’ part.”

Although new to songwriting, his instrumental music career stretches back as far as 2014. He has released two full-length albums of instrumental music, ‘Affinity’ (2017) and ‘A Shifting Lightness’ (2020), as well as numerous shorter projects and production for other artists, including Jeremy Redmore and alayna. He also composed the entire soundtrack for the short film ‘It’s Snowing Outside’ by Lucasfilm director Rayne Roberts, which project included a highly memorable trip to the illustrious Skywalker Ranch to take part in the mixing process.

“I feel like each album launches me into a new area or a new era,” Patel reflects. “Back in 2017 when I released ‘Affinity’ that was quite focused on the sound design, building the atmosphere, and that kind of ethereal feeling. My next album ‘A Shifting Lightness’ was more focused on composition. There were very few effects, it was just piano, strings, horns… very natural sounding.”

And now, with ‘Sailing On The Light of a Passing Star’ Patel’s focus has shifted to lyrics and songwriting. 

“I wrote quite simply in that it was literally just piano chords and me singing. I started them all in that bare form and then figured out the production and arrangement after that. In general I think I’d write them in one obsessive burst. Once I started it would be all I thought about for a few days. I’d write most of a song in a day, and then work on it late into the night, wake up, think about it, work on it again. If I had to do other things, I’d be singing it, or at least in my head. All of them were relatively quick. Usually I’m much slower. I’ll gradually edit a melody, and tweak a chord here and there, but these were more just full speed until I had a song!”

When it came to producing the tracks, Patel found it to be a different process from his usual instrumental music.

“With my songs, by default, they had kind of a focal point. I had the story, I had the melody, and the sound I ended up going for was very intimate, and my voice is right up front. That was kind of the core of everything, and it meant that I had a baseline to work around. When I wasn’t singing, sometimes there are big instrumental breaks, and in those moments I found myself moving more towards my usual instrumental music process, but when I was singing, I found myself using some of the same sounds and feelings, but in a much more delicate way.”

As is often the case when delivering highly personal material, Patel felt some nerves leading up to the release.

“I kind of had to trick myself into making this album,” he smiles. “I had to pretend that I was never gonna release, or at least try to forget that I’m gonna release it. When I was first writing the songs, I would tell myself that I don’t have to release them, they’re just for me. As I was putting more and more time into them, I knew that I would release them, but I just didn’t think about it.

“Even right up to the day I pressed submit with my distributor to send it into the world. I went to click the button and I realised: this is real now. It feels very exposing and showing a real part of me that I wouldn’t normally share with more than a couple of people, but I also feel quite proud of the way I managed to capture that journey.”

This decision has quickly paid off, the singles connecting with listeners around the world, including going viral in China.

“I’ve been studying Mandarin for a couple of years quite intensely, and then I spent a month in China at the end of 2023, just in a relatively small city that people don’t normally visit. I fell in love with that city and then kind of got even more into my Mandarin study. I posted a short video of me speaking Mandarin, talking about my time in that city and sharing some photos I took there. I just posted that and went to sleep, and then woke up and had a few thousand notifications on my phone and just ridiculous numbers of views. The next day it was on their local news, and then the radio station there invited me for an interview about the album and my trip!

“Since then it’s kind of accelerated. The next video that went viral was me singing a Mandarin translation of Gravity on the riverside in Queenstown, just outdoors. The more I do, the more I uncover, kind like unlocking a whole world.”

As he speaks, Patel’s passion for the culture and language is evident, as is his gratitude for the support he’s received so far.

“Just from the singles I’ve released I’ve had people connecting with the story and sharing their own ways that it resonated with them, which I find really beautiful. Very rewarding. When I’m making it, it can feel self-absorbed,” he laughs. “I spent years working on something that’s about me, but it’s good to be reminded that other people hear their stories in it as well, hear themselves in it.

“I still love instrumental music, but I feel like I have a whole additional world that I feel more confident in now. Writing songs, and writing songs with other people, I’d love to do some more of, and still exploring instrumental music. I don’t really mind how I get there, I just wanna make beautiful music.”