The brainchild of twenty-one-year-old singer, songwriter and producer Mica Levi, Micachu marries matter-of-fact, real life lyrics with off-kilter rhythms and melodies, creating the kind of pop music the likes of Kate Nash can only dream of.
Matthew certainly sees the seeds of genius in her work. “In all my years of working in the music business, and working with a few people, [I can tell] she’s the real deal,” he says assuredly.
“It seems incredibly reductive to describe someone as being the next something, but I do think that she is the next woman in a line of brilliant, experimental musicians. Not that her being a woman necessarily has anything to do with it, but, you know, Kate Bush, Bjork and her, I guess, in some ways. She has classical composition skills, and yet her pop music is incredible. You rarely get a classical musician doing studio music so well. And vice versa – she does both extremely well. On top of that, I really feel like she’s a different kind of artist.
When I first heard some demos and mix tapes and garage-y stuff from her, you could tell instantly that she had a new set of ears. Her album is like a sort of blend of all the music from the last thirty years, all linked together…” As well as her sheer musicality, and ability to blend abstract sounds into a sonically pleasing whole, there is another characteristic which, for Matthew, makes her stand out. “I think it’s about her
confidence,” he says. “Her artistic confidence. Not necessarily her confidence as a person, but the confidence she has about her ideas – however playful and abstract – that they have a specific artistic purpose and identity.
And that’s very exciting because so many musicians become conflicted, particularly when it comes to making their music public, because in making it public it kind of distorts the process or the artistic intention. But yes, [it’s great] to see the confidence in her ideas at such a young age – and rightly so, because the ideas themselves are often fantastic.”
Mica herself is very understated. “I think the urge to write music all the time is what inspires me to do it,” she says. “At the moment I am remixing and touring with my live band The Shapes (Micachu And The Shapes, who started playing together in December 2007), and there will be an album as well, which is nearly finished. I hope to play with The Shapes for as long as it works – I’m ambitious but sceptical. I hope music will be my job for the next sixty years.”
Listen to ‘Abandon Ship feat. Man Like Me’ by Micachu below –
