ALWAYS EVERYTHING

MICACHU & THE SHAPES

http://www.myspace.com/micayomusic

Micachu – Jewellery

this is everywhere pop musik should be going! an almighty, cross pollinating, hook ridden behemoth! all the usual tropes disassembled then reconstructed out of junkyard clatter; no contrivance, just an unpretentious marriage of pure creativity and pop sensability. i could say “OH YA THEY USE A VACUUM CLEANER HOW 21ST CENTURY” (and people do), but its completely not about the individual parts. each one in isolation might appear gimmicky, but all together they create the most righteous sonic collage. here is an interview i did with them for epigram. i didn’t get much out of them because

a) i opened with a question about the fuckin’ vacuum cleaner, so they thought i was a higher order putz

b) they all seemed kinda sick

c) i don’t think i really like/am very good at interviewing people

but here it is after the jump

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Possibly one of the most intriguing pop bands of recent times, Micachu & The Shapes’ debut album Jewellry is a ramshackle collection of such myriad influences and unusual instrumentation that it sounds as unclassifiable as it is catchy. Over the course of the last year Mica Levi and her backing band “The Shapes” (Marc Pell and Raisa Khan) have tightly honed their intensely creative live show to perfection, utilising all manner of equipment to recreate their unique combination of DIY pop and musique concrete; though not all elements could endure indefinitely “We don’t really use the vacuum cleaner anymore, it made me really ill actually”.

The band are keen to downplay the relevance of potentially statement making tools that find their way into the music however. “I was doing a lot of vacuuming in the house whilst listening to music and thought it would be nice to start the record with the vacuum cleaner. I don’t think its a massive musical gesture. And we can’t afford a sampler.” And as Marc interjects, its clearly far more fun to work out how to play new objects than simply sample and go. The end result being drum kits bolstered with Stella bottles and all manner of strange droning devices. “That’s the Boss delay pedal actually” Mica corrects, “I put my microphone in there and move the pitch of it to make it sound like two people are singing at the same time.”

This manner of experimentation is quite befitting of a band who cite controversial depression era composer Harry Partch as their key influence. A keenly avant garde musician, his theoretical work on microtonal scale systems helped tear apart 12 tone convention in academic music whilst he constructed his own instruments to work with his new tunings and accompany pieces based around the inflections of the speaking voice. “It was his philosophy really; I feel like I can relate to him because he was fresh thinking about writing music. He was immersed in very different parts of society and handled it really open mindedly. There was this difference of high society and people without jobs and he just dotted in between the two; because he was an academic he had access to both. He was just a brilliant inventor and great musician.”

Considering how easily this description could fit Mica, its quite clear why  Partch is such an inspiration. Equally at home studying composition at Guildhall as she is making beats for grime MCs in Bow, East London, Mica represents a meeting point of otherwise disparate musical stylings; though the combination can be a draining process as Mica experienced when they played with the ACME string quartet. “They did a piece I wrote called Bored; a short string quartet, really short movements. It was a bit of a mess really; quite scatty and aggressive. It was just weird to do a gig, connecting that with the band. The listening process for the two things are quite different and you need it in context”.

Despite Mica’s modesty, her music has attracted some high profile attention. Recently Bjork featured the video for the band’s latest single “Turn Me Weller” on her website. “Rachel shook her hand, Marc saw her and I spoke to her on the phone. We did the first stages of meeting somebody but all seperately!” Legendary avant garde electronic musician Matthew Herbert was sufficiently impressed by Mica’s home recordings to co produce the album, and his limitation imposing recording manifesto brings things full circle back to Mica’s Guildhall days; “Lots of composers were the same and that’s one of the things we learnt at Guildhall; getting certain projects and being told to do this or that a certain way in briefs.”

Micachu & The Shapes are certainly the kind of band who need to impose limitations to reign in the sheer wealth of ideas bursting forth. The next step from Jewelry could be in any direction, but it seems sure to be fascinating wherever it leads.

Simon Docherty (Originally for Epigram)

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