Saturday, April 17, 2010

Mica-like

Caught a rare performance of Micachu and the Shapes at the Getty today.  Micachu, alias to Mica Levi, deliberately strums dissonate chords that emerge into rhythms.  Joined with the Shapes, Raisa Khan (keyboards, electronics, percussion) and Marc Pell (drums), this London threesome create noisescapes that lead you everywhere and nowhere at once.  Marc's percussion continually found Mica's floundering complex beat patterns, which Raisa provided sounds that clash and soothed the ears.  
Micachu experiments with glitch (digital mess ups), using and sampling them to create obscure, almost awkward sounding recordings.  Raisa plays glass bottles for the high pitched ring and pounds the keys for a melodic drone.  The experimentation with sound that the Shapes performed was inspiring to me.
We've been noticing this "pixel" pattern everywhere... Is it an Animal Collective thing?  A Math thing?  Usually it has to do with the visualization of the music and its rhythm patterns.  I wonder what this piece of tile would sound like....