CityLife

Micachu's the diamond girl for 2009

Micachu and The Shapes: Raisa, Mica and Mark

MEET pop’s eclectic newcomer – a classically trained violinist, a published composer, a grime and garage MC, and now globetrotting bright young thing – Mica Levi, frontwoman with Micachu & The Shapes.

Sitting in New York following a successful stint at Austin’s SXSW Festival, Mica spares a few minutes between phone calls for CityLife.

And we’re more than happy to hook up, because Mica is the proud parent of one of the most critically lauded records of the year so far, Jewellery.

It’s a fact about which she seems somewhat underwhelmed. “It’s really good to be given the opportunity to put the record out,” she eventually concludes. “To do that with so much support is amazing.  

Looking forward

“I tend not to read reviews, the record’s done, we’re really happy with it, but we just want to get on with writing the next record. I think it’s really important to keep looking forward.”  

The truth, in fact, is that Mica just doesn’t like interviews. Outside of the creative context, she’s evidently ill at ease.  

And yet being a fish out of water is something Mica is used to. She doesn’t exactly look like a composer either: she's a 21-year-old girl from Bow, east London, with shaggy hair and an inventive dress sense. 

But she is; her music has been performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Beefheart

She calls her music pop, but it’s pop in the context that people like Laurie Anderson or Bow Wow Wow became popular music. In many other ways, it’s about as out there as Captain Beefheart (Lips, in particular, is reminiscent of Beefheart’s ad-lib sense of structure).  

Is she surprised it’s been embraced so enthusiastically? “There’s some really unusual music out there that people are OK with, so I never thought understanding our music would be an issue.  

“In general, a lot of the songs do have traditional structures, the lengths are a bit short probably (Sweetheart clocks in at a mere 53 seconds). But a pop chart represents all sorts across the breadth of different styles of music. You might get R&B, a Eurohouse track, a guitar rock song - they're all represented in the Top 10. 

“As a band we’ve developed a soundscape together. We’re developing what sound we want for the future – it’s sort of a collision of all those sounds and influences.”  

Dichotomous

The dichotomous pulls of Mica’s classical discipline and experimental bent are all over Jewellery.

Eat Your Heart combines a love for grime, garage and electro gizmos, Curly Teeth – banged out on a rattling acoustic guitar – pops with loops and samples, inside Golden Phone burns a pure pop heart while Turn Me Well kicks off with the noise of a vacuum cleaner.  

Each one, though, is a complex assembly of ideas, and so it’s little wonder that Mica was picked up by producer Matthew Herbert (an avant-garde creator who’s worked with Bjork and Patrick Wolfe) for his Accidental Records imprint. Even her subsequent record deal with uber-cool London label Rough Trade feels like part of the complex puzzle. 

For the most part, Jewellery sounds like a result of a child revisiting the unbridled joys of banging her mum’s best pots and pans with a wooden spoon. Mica laughs, knowingly: “I guess so,” she smiles.

Parallels

“I think what was attractive about making the record was the initial ideas weren’t very technical.  

“I got over the idea of playing classical music a long time ago. I love that I had the training and I feel I still use it every day. I don’t see what I’m doing now as different – its skills that can be applied to everything: there’s parallels in the way you order things and in composition.  

“A lot of musicians have studied classical music. It seems not very rock ’n’ roll to say you’ve studied classical. It does seem a lot cooler if it comes from nowhere. People should be proud to say if they’ve had an opportunity to study on instrument. It’s an opportunity a lot of people would like to have had.”  

She’s still to complete her studies at Guildhall School Of Music And Drama, in London, a course she and bandmate Raisa Khan have put on hold so they don’t mess up their final year. But they still write with drummer/percussionist Marc Pell as often as they can.  

Noisy

“It’s hard to work on the road, though, so this isn’t a very creative time for us. It’s a noisy place; it’s hard to find the peace you need.  

“Me, Mark and Raisa all work best if we’re working on music; having a continual creative output is how we feel healthy and enthusiastic. 

“I’m not complaining. I’m young and this is such a great opportunity to see the world and do what I love. But it is tiring!”  

And there’s no sign of any peace any time soon, either. In the morning, they fly back to the UK to begin their British and European tours.  

“Being in England is amazing,” she laughs.  “Living in London, you forget what the rest of the country is like, but there’s so much weird stuff in the UK.”

Michachu & The Shapes play the Deaf Institute on Tuesday, March 30. £6.