Micachu - Jewellery
Quite simply, there is not another young musical artist in the country like Micachu. 2008 has seen the 21 year old – aka Mica Levi - release two ltd edition 7" singles, a grime mixtape and score an instrumental piece for the London Philharmonic Orchestra performed at the Royal Festival Hall and play at the BBC Electric Proms. In doing so, she has set out her stall as one of the most original, challenging and unique new artists in the country.
Owing as much to the visionary experimentalism of Harry Partch (Mica has created her own instrument, The Chu) as to the alchemist genius of Bjork, Jewellery throws out a myriad of sounds, genres, electro-static squawks, vacuum cleaners revs, loops and lewd lyrics: all condensed into 34 minutes of a avante-garde, pop wonder.
In Mica's own words: "Jewellery is a collection of pop songs, old and new, about all kinds of nonsense.. With this in mind, each song intends to be very striking characteristically - reflecting the lyrical intention or character with the sound-world and samples used."
"For example, 'Wrong' sounds mechanical in the song when it's about body building; 'Vultures' is meant to sound like a swarm of birds and the beginning of 'Golden Phone' has a ringing sound, but not using a phone…"
"The band I play with, The Shapes came together half way though making Jewellery which in some ways presented the challenge of combining very live sounding recordings with bedroom produced material. "
"The Shapes breathed life into the record and it was really fun to do. I'm very proud of this album and it was a real privilege to be able to indulge in a project like this. In the end I hope we came up with something substantial"
Equally at home making brilliant leftfield pop, as she is composing for orchestras and making mix tapes that mash up dubstep, grime, garage and pop, it comes as no surprise that Micachu's Matthew Herbert produced debut LP Jewellery is the aural equivalent of a chameleon: a multi-coloured, multi-layered conflation of ground breaking sounds and ideas.
Band: Mica Levi (Vocals, guitar and electronics) / Raisa Kahn (Keys) / Marc Pell (Drums)
Tracks: Vulture /Lips /Sweetheart /Eat Your Heart /Curly Teeth /Golden Phone /Abandon Ship /Just In Case / Calculator /Floor / Worst Bastard / Wrong / Turn Me Well / Guts / Hardcore