Matthew Skopyk

In my opinion, the act of building something is tantamount with reproduction as one of the chief reasons for human existence. It can be anything, from a house to a document to a photograph. In the music world, the method of creation can go beyond merely developing a song into the realm of actually building the instruments. Aphex Twin is famous for building his own synths. Bjork is frequently cited as avant-garde for her all-inclusive approach to sound design. Tom Waits is a junkyard genius, almost single-handedly bringing lo-fi to the mainstream. These big names are a part of the lineage that continues with London’s Micachu.

Jewellery is the debut from Micachu, the grime-folk project of experimental British pop artist Mica Levi. On these dizzying punk-length pop exercises, she’s sometimes flanked by a live band called the Shapes but her choppy samples and detuned melodies are rarely missing from the mix. Samples, buzzes, crashes and other found sounds hang on for dear life to hobo blues guitar licks as Mica divulges her skewed views on life and love. Her flat, androgynous singing style is reminiscent of Berlin transplants such as Planningtorock and Kevin Blechdom, but with a significantly more abrasive sonic base.

Producer Matthew Herbert’s penchant for unorthodox instrumentation and sampling is shared with Levi, as she can be heard playing a vacuum cleaner and glass bottles for melodic effect on this record. She also invented an adapted guitar called a “chu” that has a pedal for pitch shifting on the go.

Outside of the frantic edits and interest in physically constructing new implements for art, Jewellery also holds a strong core of songs. The off-key melodies and playing on this record may make this a tough listen for some, but songs like the Timbaland meets Tin Pan Alley diss ballad “Curly Teeth” and the epically unhinged electro-grunge closer “Guts” have a compelling, addictive quality. Strip these songs down to the basics and they retain their strength, moving you beyond the initial expectation of her aesthetic decisions being gimmicky. It’s definitely not style over substance.

A similar struggle lies closer to home. Opening act for Christian Hansen’s album release party, Matthew Skopyk’s six-piece long-awaited pop project debuted last Saturday at the ARTery. After a technologically inspired false start, the band bounded through the contents of its first release, Find Your Love. Skopyk’s approach implies a carpenter’s knowledge. He designed and built most of the computer-integrated gear seen on stage, including an opaque solid rectangle that lit up and played chords when it was touched, a Tron-like ring device that seemed to modulate vocals like a vocoder and MIDI-controlled cello and violin that played notes and looped segments.

It was a ton of flash, but it was well-executed. The music itself recalls early ‘90s techno and late ‘80s acid house, funnelled through modern technology and the very Edmontonian lyrical themes of isolation and alienation. It’s projects like these that illuminate the inquisitive nature of the human mind and how our ideas can be manifested into physical objects of permanent value. - Vue Weekly (Article by Roland Pemberton)