Micachu

While being at SxSW 2009 in Austin Leon tipped me for checking Micachu & the Shapes. The day before I got a flyer from Vincent Moon and we arrived at a flashy looking magazine party during the afternoon where Micachu was on the list of performers. I drank the worst coke ever, tasting like perfume and after sitting in the sun and drinking coke light, because that tasted even better than the real one, I went inside to see them playing. This was together with Nite Jewel the only band that was new to me and I actually liked. The freshness of Micachu’s new approach struck me. Micachu plays on neat looking adapted children guitars. Electric and acoustic ones with smart guitar preparations among the strings. I saw her playing with a pin card weaved at the head of the electric guitar, causing great low pitched random buzzing. With her altered instrumentation she blends noisy rock with easy listening and very dancable pop tunes.

Afterwards I briefly approached her and her beau tourmanager who gave me her card funnily mentioning Liz - Miss Management. Mica mentioned she had not only prepared her guitars, but also had constructed some primitive experimental instruments and was very into Harry Partch, so we quickly had a click and a subject to talk about. By way of Liz I contacted them and we remet in Paradiso, Amsterdam one month later before her performance at the London Calling Festival 2009.

Biography

Source www.windishagency.com/artists/micachu/bio & altmusic.about.com

Micachu is the moniker of major new talent, 21 year old songwriter and producer Mica Levi from London.

Despite her relative youth, Mica arrives as something of a Midas touched, Renaissance artist: equally at home writing and producing stunning, experimental pop with the likes of Matthew Herbert, as MCing with friends in various grime collectives and balancing this with her day time tutorage at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where she's studying composition.

Perhaps the real beauty of Mica's talent is despite her prodigious musical ability she without fail keeps things rough around the edges: no polished beats when bit fat dirty ones will do, obvious choruses eschewed for intricate yet subtle melodies that grow and grow..

Mica studied violin, viola and composition at the Purcell School of before being offered a scholarship to attend the Guildhall School of Music and Drama to study composition. Her talent as a young composer has not gone unnoticed with Mark Anthony Turnage commissioning her to write an orchestral piece for the London Philharmonic Orchestra to be performed at the Royal Festival Hall on April 29th.

For live shows Micachu plays with her band the Shapes: a three-piece fronted by Mica (vocals, guitar, electronics and Hoover), Raisa Kahn (keys) and Marc Pell (drums). Armed with just her beat up, half sized guitar and hidden beneath a mop of hair, Mica's understated appearance belies her startling musical prowess.

Levy has fashioned an oddball mish-mash of musical futurism that's refused to be defined. After authoring a grime mix-tape, Levy started unveiling her misshapen pop-songs, all whilst treating Londoners to avant-gardist performances in which she uses glass bottles, vacuum-cleaners, CD racks, and home-made electronic apparatuses as instruments.

Championed by celebrity humans like like Björk, Bat for Lashes, and Saul Williams, Levy has funneled her initial penchant for dabbling into one vaguely-consistent form; pouring her various musical notions into one thing, whilst never losing that insistent curiosity. Levy's freshly-minted Micachu debut, Jewellery, finds an array of compositional miniatures compressing countless ideas into tiny forms: single "Lips," for example, 80 seconds of scattershot rhythms, erratic noises, and thwacked guitar plunk.

Discography

Albums

Micachu – Jewellery, CD, Rough Trade Records, 2009

Singles

Lone Ranger (2008)

Golden Phone (2008)

Lips (2009)

External links

Micachu & The Shapes on MySpace

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