Artist Micachu And The Shapes

If you've ever seen Hayao Miyazaki's movie Howl's Moving Castle, you'll remember the gigantic mobile domicile of the title—a lumbering, patchwork device that at first looked too clumsy to exist, but turned out to have its own surprising, weird, endearingly limber grace. Apply that idea to music, and you have something like the cracklingly random compositions of UK prodigy Mica Levi, leader of Micachu And The Shapes. The trio's debut, Jewellery, doesn't blend genres so much as smash them together and glue the bits back any which way. Grime, folk, synth-pop, and glitchy electronica are all in the mix, and though Levi never lets you know where she's heading from one moment to the next, it all somehow, unexpectedly and charmingly, works.

Updated 09/10/2009