Press
ALBUM DER WOCHE - RADIO 3FACH
GLAMCULT - Heart tattoo
“Livia Rita carefully crafts her own utopian universe and channels it into a never-seen-before album format. Revolutionising the traditional approach to music, each song is brought to life by a different creature – all of them with their own character, superpower, habitat and, of course, an otherworldly look designed by Livia Rita herself. Nothing is impossible in Livia’s expansive body of work..“
Swarm Magazine
.“I am thinking a lot about the potential of love to be a change-maker. What if it is liberated from our social structures, for which we reserve those feelings for… I have no answer but I’m trying to really follow hints towards utopia whilst very much keeping anxieties also on the surface, and incorporate future visions wherever possible. It actually feels more like an an act of dreaming & feeling & desiring, radically. Taking dreams dead seriously, throwing all energy at them, embracing the emotions and challenges that come with it, in order to try and recycle the frustration and disappointment that comes with it into new motivation..“
Crack Magazine
With her multi-disciplinary creations, Livia Rita conveys a vibrant, otherworldly vision filled with ethereal entities, sonic sorcery and tinged with a sense of the uncanny.
The London-based artist crafts avant-garde eco-pop rooted in queer utopia, explorations of otherness and a close relationship to the natural world, as their debut album Fuga Futura – released last October – showcases. And the live performance side forms an intrinsic part of Rita’s work, their shows offering an outer-dimensional experience and expression inhabited by a cast of mythological creatures and fauna.
The next opportunity to delve into the world of Livia Rita and the Avantgardeners Community – the collective she forms part of – is this coming weekend. At the Southbank Centre, she presents Dystopia Wetland, joined by a live band, dancers and the aforementioned creatures. Ahead of the shows, here she provides our latest Selections playlist.
“This playlist brings together my personal survival kit for planet earth,” Rita tells us over email. “I don’t feel 100% at home, I feel like I need to entangle with nature and fantasy to mutate into a creature with superpowers,” they add as further explanation. Featuring tracks from Marina Herlop, Fever Ray, Björk, Overmono and Julee Cruise, thematically Livia Rita says this playlist explores “dreams, emotions, desire, community & rhythm, brutal, vulnerable, fantasy horror”.
Strand Magazine
Senza futuro - Heart Tattoo
Be careful and be prepared to be submerged in Love. Livia Rita (they/she) is the sublime guardian of the magic spell behind “Heart Tattoo”, newly released track from the Fuga Futura concept album which will be out the 7th of October.
Sleek magazine - Muscle of Freedom
“Being a creature to me is also an ambitious attempt for growth as well as an attempt to extend identity towards the mystical, and become more connected to nature again – even part of it.”
Saiten magazine
“FUGA FUTURA ist kein gewöhnliches Album. Es ist eine eigene Welt. Im Zentrum der Musik steht die ausdrucksstarke Stimme von Livia Rita, die von geistiger und sexueller Befreiung singt, von gesellschaftlichem Wandel und von mythischen Kreaturen. Der Art-Pop der Toggenburgerin erinnert oft an Björk, ohne wie eine billige Kopie der isländischen Ausnahmekünstlerin zu klingen. Die Musik ist kontrastreich, in stetem Fluss, mal sanft treibend, mal mitreissend, nie langweilig. Ob im sphärischen Eröffnungsstück JUST HAPPIER oder in EXPIRED CRYSTAL mit den stampfenden Beats: FUGA FUTURA hat eine klangliche Vielfalt, deren Sog man sich kaum entziehen kann. Noch beeindruckender ist das alles live, wenn mit ausgefallenen Kostümen, schrillen Figuren und Tanz-Performances in ein audiovisuelles Gesamtkunstwerk entsteht. FUGA FUTURA ist ein ganz starkes Debüt, das auf mehr hoffen lässt.” - David Gadze
Byte FM radio - magic fish
short interview & Magic Fish as part of the Sendung
STRAND MAG
Rita repeats at the height of the song—the culmination of an ascent that is as beautiful as it is surprising. It’s as if we’re being told that regardless of what the future holds, love will be at its centre. There are parts of this song that are familiar, like the arms of something you know and love, among an otherwise foreign, futuristic sonic landscape. It’s such a gem. (…) Their vocals here remind me a little bit of Mitski’s ‘Liquid Smooth’, the kind of voice that is both sly and desperate, the kind that implores you to listen. (…)
“I wanted to climb Himalaya / but with you I was happy on a hill,” Rita sings on ‘Dead Angel’, a song that I’ll be thinking about for a while. The opening instrumental of the song sounds like a void, or a computer error, or just something gone wrong; the rest of it aptly catalogues the empty landscape of a heart after being broken. “Dead Angel” happens to be the longest track on Fuga Futura, and the space it’s been given is well-deserved. (…)
The album’s title track is an intriguing one. It transcends the boundaries of time: “I want to feel you, who we are, here, now, young in old times/Appetite of beating hearts, and passing lives and blinking eyes”. It’s by far the most hopeful song on the album, and hope is the perfect place to end on. Much like the opening song, it blooms. It is not just reaching for the future. It’s inviting you to come along, too.
Kaltblut - Heart tattoo
SPAM MAGAZINE - Interview about the creature metamorphosis
Kulturtipp (DE)- Interview FUTURA
Age of Fatality Review - FEROCE Magazine
“We are lured into a cave-like setting filled with Livia and her fellow witches all in a shared, resolute worship. Whilst visually compelling and somewhat intimidating, there is a distinct air of purpose, belonging, fertility and security. Livia is known for her eco-conscious feminist writing, and it certainly isn’t amiss here.”
“The first thing that hooked me into Age of Fatality, is its hypnotic simplicity. A driving and bouncy bass synth welcomes you, open with almost endless opportunities of how the song will build on an already infectious start. Livia’s whispered and staggered vocals reel you like the faint glow of an angler fish’s light: before you know it, you’re too close to escape as you begin to see and hear the bigger picture. The chorus explodes with higher layers of wet, crackly synths and pads as the bass synth grows and swells in aggression.”
3Fach - Bestes Stück
“Der Track fühlt sich an wie ein Traum, aus dem man nie wirklich erwacht (…) Selbst beschreibt Livia Rita das Ganze ziemlich passend als Mythic Eco Pop. Sieht und hört man auch - es ist alles sehr surreal und natürlich und aus der Reihe tanzend.“
A Room Interview
“Delightful oddball and bursting with creative fuel, the singer shares a message of human connection and living a sustainable life. A designer, nature activist and art director, the singer invites listeners into her freeing world and headspace one release after the next. Definitely not afraid to stand out, Livia Rita blossoms as an avant pop goddess that is true to her vision and mission.”
Trashymuse
Diffus news zum Fuga Futura album
45rpm - interview
Neo 1 - Kurzbericht zu Fuga Futura
Reform radio - takeover
Reform Radio - Takeover 2
Noods radio - takeover
AAJA Radio Show
FUTURA exhibition @Kunsthalle Wil - ArtTV.CH
Kaltblut Magazine - Sesselilift Modenschau preview
SCREAM IT Release - Screenshot Magazine
Show review - GUM Magazine
“Nobody could have come up with these visceral, movable, breathable costumes, except someone who feels inherently in touch with their body and with nature – women. Nobody could have interpreted relationships inside out and looked at them in such a way except someone who has a deeper understanding of how love has no hierarchy or bounds, only boundaries – queer people. Most importantly, nobody could have come up with the performance in its entirety except Livia Rita.”
creature metamorphosis - interview STRAND MAGAZINe
Age of Fatality Review - Züritipp Tagesanzeiger
“Nicht nur die Musik ist radikal – sondern auch ihre Visionen.”
FUTURA Installation @Kunsthalle Wil - Tagblatt
“Die Zukunft bleibt offen, aber sie ist gestaltbar, und gemäss Livia Rita ist der richtige Zeitpunkt damit anzufangen: jetzt.”
GUM Magazine
You make music and performance but you keep coming back to fashion as a central point from which all your work kind of pivots, why is that?
LIVIA: It’s a very straight forward way of playing with one‘s identity that is immediately super communicative.
Narc Magazine
"Live, hers is an incomparable fusion of sound and vision in which she indoctrinates her audience into her post-human utopia of future feminism and queer ecology. From wearable art to surreal 4D music videos, Livia’s beguiling and uncompromising approach to artistic activism will ensure an evening of dance, music and art like no other."
Helicon Magazine
“Her imagined, edenic universe is lush, a gorgeous mesh of queer utopia and eco-feminism.”
Glossy
‘Queer representation is important everywhere’: Fashion’s lack of diversity called out during fashion month
Pink News
Dazed Beauty
Kumiusik
Dazed Magazine
C. R. Andrews, Pagan Poetry, Dazed Mag., Oct. 2019
Shambala Festival 2022 - Top musical picks
Radio 3Fach
IBK Förderpreis 2021
Die Toggenburgerin Livia Rita Heim überzeugte die Jury durch ihre Interdisziplinarität und die engagierte und visionäre Bereicherung des Textil-Diskurses.
Timeout London, 2018
