Micachu & The Shapes formed part of this year’s Illuminations Festival, a series of uniquely curated music and arts events held in various London locations. Tonight's show was at Oval Space, a futuristic, muddled collection of annex’s overlooking the built-up East London area of Hackney - disorientating in nature, an applicable setting for tonight’s act.
Mica Levi, a classically trained London-based musician, studied at the renowned Guildford School of Music, and has previously worked with a mixed bag of collaborators including Toddla T, Jack Peñate, Ghost Poet and Speech Debelle. She also wrote the film score to lasts years’ sci-fi, horror art film Under The Skin, directed by Jonathan Glazer, for which she won Best Film Composer at The European Film Awards.
She isn’t archetypal in any way - androgynous in appearance and sound, she completely defies conformity, insisting her music is 'pop', yet jolting and bending its structure and characteristics at every turn - from her abstract use of time-breaks to her drawling, monstrous vocals which often twitch abruptly to childlike lucidity.
With the recent release of the band’s third LP, Good Sad Happy Bad, we hear more of a grungy, electronic hue, adding much heavier elements to the bands original aura in comparison to the days of ‘Lips’ and ‘Golden Phone’, which were much more playful and jovial. Live, tracks ‘Oh Baby’ and ‘Sad’ were amped up considerably, and were performed with a great deal more instrumental and vocal power than on record.
Micachu and her Shapes are disorientating and disjointed, jittery and at times teetering on the edge of nonsensical, and it is in this almost alienating twilight zone that we find their brave, enigmatic brilliance.
