Rough Trade Records is delighted to announce the signing of 21 year old Mica Levi AKA Micachu. Despite her relative youth, Mica arrives as something of a Midas touched, Renaissance artist: equally at home writing and producing stunning, experimental pop with the likes of Matthew Herbert, as MCing with friends in various grime collectives and balancing this with her day- time tutorage at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where she's studying composition. Perhaps the real beauty of Mica's talent is despite her prodigious musical ability she without fail keeps things rough around the edges: no polished beats when big fat dirty ones will do, obvious choruses eschewed for intricate yet subtle melodies that grow and grow.. Mica studied violin, viola and composition at the Purcell School of before being offered a scholarship to attend the Guildhall School of Music and Drama to study composition. Her talent as a young composer has not gone unnoticed with Mark Anthony Turnage commissioning her to write an orchestral piece for the London Philharmonic Orchestra to be performed at the Royal Festival Hall on April 29th. For live shows Micachu plays with her band the Shapes: a three-piece fronted by Mica (vocals, guitar, electronics and Hoover), Raisa Kahn (keys) and Marc Pell (drums). Armed with just her beat up, half sized guitar and hidden beneath a mop of hair, Mica's understated appearance belies her startling musical prowess. Equally at home making brilliant leftfield pop, as she is composing for orchestras and making mix tapes that mash up dubstep, grime, garage and pop, it comes as no surprise that Micachu's Matthew Herbert produced debut LP Jewellery is the aural equivalent of a chameleon: a multi-coloured, multi-layered conflation of ground breaking sounds and ideas.