Micachu - Erudite popster

Micachu, a.k.a Mika Levi is a 21-year old musician from the UK. Her debut album "Jewellery", produced by influential electronic musician Matthew Herbert and released on Rough Trade, was tipped by many critics to become the album of the year. She performs live with the band The Shapes.

How would you define the music that you make?

I’m not sure exactly, but it’s really annoying when someone says that they can’t define their music, so I should think of something, it’s fairly "poppy", perhaps? Noisy pop, even. I mean in essence, they are a bunch of pop songs, but we are trying to define the sound through the instruments we use as opposed to anything else, so it is a little bit different. At the moment we are doing a lot of live stuff with the band. The sound is pretty textural. A lot of the material that we use is derived from sampling and choosing the sounds that we like, coming up with bass lines that we want to hear. We’re not really trying to assign ourselves to a particular genre, it really is just what we want to hear.

Is there something that you would say your music was about?

There’s no political ethos or anything like that. A lot of the songs, in terms of meaning, are about neurosis, and it’s all personal to me, but there is no intended message.

Why do you think you stand out from other bands at the moment, what do you think makes you different?

Well, we try a lot of stuff out that doesn’t necessarily work, or it might work but the result is something quite uncomfortable. I really don’t know, though, specifically what makes us different, I think that’s something for everyone else to decide.

What would you say are your main influences?

Oh my God, there’s so much stuff! Too much in fact! Me personally at the moment, I’ve been listening to The Excess and The Invisible, who I think are amazing. I listen to a lot of electronic music, I really liked Capital K when I was younger, I still do! I listen to a lot of hip hop production from people like Timbaland and J Dilla. I listen to a lot of jazz like Alice Coltrane and Charlie Hooker, but that was a while ago now, I guess it’s been a lot of hip hop and a lot of Harry Partch. I’ve also been getting into a lot of eighties and nineties American punk bands; I can see some similarities in the sounds that we are producing. I am drawn to music that has a distinctive sound.

Genres such as hip hop and R&B have ‘mainstream’ associations that contrast with the more electronic/underground components that comes through in your music. What do you think is the relationship between the mainstream genres and the more avant-garde stuff?

I listen to all types of music, and there is good and bad stuff that exists in both realms. I like the confidence and the attitude that comes with garage and R’n’B, but as with anything, some of it is really crap. I think how music is received is relevant to the creative process that it comes from, I am not writing records that I know will appeal to a certain demography. I think it would be difficult for us to write anything for the purpose of a paycheck or to meet a certain criteria that would be defined by someone else.

You come from a classically trained background, how do you think this has influenced your music?

I guess it’s a good thing, I feel very lucky to have had musical training, it has meant that I could focus on music all my life, but most of what I have learnt, I learnt from listening to records as opposed to what I was taught at school. I think it’s great to have educational training and I think education facilitates technical advantages, for example you could have someone teach you to play something in a way that is better to suit your body shape. For me, the point of studying composition, as far as I can see it, is that it buys you time to focus on your own projects and grasp a better skill of communicating ideas from your own projects. I think it’s good to take it all in and then forget about it as well, people being educated in a certain way can sometimes forget the need to explore.

Björk was recently spotted in your audience, who else would you like to see in future audiences?

Well Björk is hard to beat to be honest, that really was a crowning moment. The Queen would be nice, I’d like to do a gig at Buckingham Palace. There’s no one in particular, I guess I’d like it if our music could reach people who wouldn’t normally get the chance to hear it, like old people maybe. I’d like doing gigs in old peoples’ homes; I have done that in the past.

Unconventional instruments, for example the Hoover, are placing a signature over your live set, what do you think this brings to your sound?

Well we want to try different things. The Hoover came to me when I realised that most people put on a CD or listen to the radio when they are hoovering. I really enjoy this element to making music, playing with instruments and exploring sound, and I don’t think it’s done enough. I don’t think that instruments are made to be played just one particular way or produce one particular sound. Harry Parch was a pioneer of this, altering and creating many of his own instruments. It’s about challenging stuff to create something fresh and having as much fun as possible when you’re doing it.