With a newly released album and the likes of Golden Silvers and Josh Weller singing their praises, Micachu and the Shapes have been lighting up the London circuit for a good year or so now, to much acclaim from fellow musicians and music loving public alike. Unfortunately it seems that the Sunday evening smattering of people at Standon this year weren’t quite far enough into the loop to appreciate exactly what they were missing when they decided not to visit the gloomy Apollo tent at ten to seven on the last night of the festival, and thus in a true catch 22, the limp crowd reaction and frankly awful technical attendance meant that the band were not on nearly the same form as when I saw them at Bronze club at the turn of the year. Sitting the band down for a chat beforehand, Levi (Micachu), Marc (drummer) and Raisa (synths ad percussion) seemed slightly subdued, probably because they’d just had to sit through a much longer, and probably much more boring interview just a second before…

Elliot; As a drummer, Im particularly taken by your use of percussion throughout the band, and even more so to that extent by the different objects used to make music, like, you use bottles, tin cans, even putting card under the strings of a guitar gives the sound a more rhythmic effect. How did you go about discovering these uses for things?

 Levi; Well I mean, we write beats a lot, so the percussion and rhythm thing is really important, but like, I just discover things, like the card in the strings, was just from me messing around with it, and writing a song off it…

 Raisa; If you need a sound, you just have to create sounds to fill the gap.

 Elliot; So how does the song writing go, does Mica write it and then you come together, or is it completely a collective effort?

 Marc; Yeah, Mica will write a song, and we’ll all have input on how it builds from there, so it becomes our own.

 Elliot; I think that way, you get structure, but the song progresses more organically…

 Marc; That’s the second time I’ve heard that said today… I think organic is a good way to describe that kind of songwriting…

 Levi; How would you describe vegetables then?

 Marc; reaaal food…innit. (followed by dead silence)

 Elliot; Riiiight…well that’s going to be the best bit of this interview write up! Do you lot like Electronic dance music a lot? I know you DJ Mica, and I’ve heard your ‘filthy friends’ mixtape…

 Levi; Yeah, I mean, we like to go out, and see Djs, and do a lot of remixes and that, and so I’m more up for seeing Djs than bands when I go out, but at the same time, we go out and see bands because we’re a band…

 Raisa; I prefer seeing bands. (bit more silence)

The shapes’ band dynamic is a funny one. Two very strong female presences in Levi and Raisa mean a great deal of ‘lets not fuck about here’ which is only broken by the boyish humour of Marc, who succeeds on getting the crowd onside during the 20 minute delay at the start of the set, due completely to soundman incompetence. While the actual interview was short, and mostly blabbering on my part as I tried to entertain the trio, the selected words from the band above show an interesting nonchalance in the face of conformity, using whatever they want to create songs however they want them and for as long as they want them, yet managing to get a hook in there that keeps such bizarrely formed ‘organic’ songs in your head for days after… go see them, but only in a small bar.