Micachu and the Shapes formed at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where Mica Levi, born in Guildford in 1987 and raised in Watford, was studying composition. Levi teamed up with keyboardist Raisa Khan and drummer Marc Pell, borrowing the ‘Micachu’ name from a Pokémon. The band quickly became known for songs that were short, busy and gleefully disorienting, played partly on modified and homemade instruments, including a self-built contraption Levi called ‘the chopper’.
Their debut album Jewellery, produced by Matthew Herbert and released on Rough Trade in 2009, crammed pop hooks, garage-rock rattle and musique concrète into miniatures that sounded like they had been assembled from household objects. In 2011 they released Chopped and Screwed, a live recording of a 2010 collaboration with the London Sinfonietta, a rare instance of an indie band and a contemporary music ensemble meeting as genuine equals.
Never, released on Rough Trade in 2012 and home to ‘Low Dogg’, is the band’s most abrasive and propulsive record: scrappy, percussive and full of sudden left turns, but with Levi’s deadpan melodies always cutting through. It was followed in 2015 by Good Sad Happy Bad, recorded in a single night with no rehearsal. The next year the band adopted that title as its new name, expanding to a four-piece with CJ Calderwood and with Khan taking over lead vocals.
Levi’s parallel career as a film composer has been extraordinary. The unnerving score for Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013) won Best Composer at the European Film Awards and a BAFTA nomination; Jackie (2016) earned an Academy Award nomination; and The Zone of Interest (2023) won the Soundtrack Award at Cannes. Levi has also produced much of Tirzah’s acclaimed output and named Bernard Herrmann as a favourite film composer. A football-mad child, Levi reportedly turned up on the first day at the Purcell School in full kit, shin pads and all.
