According to Pop Levi, the world went wrong sometime around 1990.

"Look at any artistic movement, things come in fresh bursts and then tail off," he says.

"In the future it's probably going to be a classic time when people were not on it. I mean, just look at the difference between someone like Celine Dion and Aretha Franklin. The Nineties" he trails, "Well I'm not interested - I just don't care."

With a shiny basin crop and an alarming goatee, Levi is medieval minstrel meets Mark Bolan. Born in London to a Jewish doctor and gentile nurse, he started playing the piano when he was three and wrote his first song, Through The Window Of My Life, when he was nine.

Levi drops "mans" like bombs, says his "astral" music is the future of pop and generally detests most things post-1990.

"I don't listen to contemporary music. I'm interested in classic recordings from the Twenties," he continues. "I don't watch TV, listen to the radio or read magazines.

"I'm not that impressed with the world, man. You know why?

Because of all the s*** people keep pumping out."

Right now Levi resides in Echo Park, Los Angeles, four miles from Hollywood and surrounded by sun and palm trees. It's a long way from Liverpool, where he once flogged ice creams in Morecambe Bay by day and made music with Super Numeri and Ladytron by night.

He would play his music on the streets of Liverpool - not to busk but so he could, "play songs in a public environment until I knew them inside out".

Unfortunately Levi has a permanent reminder of one of these outings, after some scally took exception to his astral presence. "I have a permanent scar where my sunglasses dug in," he says, without a trace of irony.

While some of the locals weren't too keen on his music, the people at Ninja Tunes, who released albums for Super Numeri, were. They created a new label, Counter Records, for Levi and released his debut, The Return to Form Black Magick Party.

The album is very heavy on the psychedelic rock, leading to shouts of "pastiche" from some corners, but Levi has other ideas.

"I see it as post-modern fusion of the history of rock 'n' roll put into pop," he explains.

Right now the man of numerous talents is working on a book, Novella. It's going to be a collection of short stories, prose poems, diary excerpts and number systems, "the art of the way numbers look".

The Guide suggests this sounds a little like Pete Doherty and his drug-induced scrawlings, the Book of Albion. Levi is not impressed, and why would he be?

After all, it's so post-1990, man.

  • Starts 7pm, tickets £6 from Rounder. Call 01273 325440.