My name is Rachel and I perform under LVRA - I’m a 23-year-old artist, producer and DJ of Chinese heritage, based in London now but originally born and raised in Edinburgh.

I feel like my music has landed in a place that combines my love for all the different phases of pop, alternative, rock and club music I had growing up. Despite the many hundreds of genres and sub-genres there are now, a lot of them speak to the same raw emotions that we collectively feel as humans, so I’ve found it most exciting when an artist can find a deeper connection with their listener through pushing boundaries. It’s why I’ve always had a curiosity for experimental music and artists who can explore concepts and feelings in a new way.

You got it - I love the idea of a paradox. Something which should be contradictory but, in some senses, feels true anyway. The point of a paradox is to make you think - and that is exactly what I wanted the listener to do. Writing this EP was my way of journaling all these thoughts - of things like beauty, religion, capitalism, morality, and ultimately the freedom we have to choose our own path.

I’d describe it as feeling like being swallowed by a huge monster and making a tough journey through its dark, gooey and violent insides until you make it out the other end and land on a soft bed of sand. By the end you feel like you’ve been reborn.

To stick to my earlier metaphor - those songs represent the latter half of the journey through this monster’s insides. Anxiety, you’re very much stuck in the chaos of the stomach, whist by venom you’ve gained the confidence to fight your way out. Although the songs individually capture different thoughts, as a whole they represent a desire to question, understand and then act on the ever-changing ideas around us.

When I look back on my life I can see how quickly my perceptions have changed as I have moved to new places, met new people, had new experiences. The songs explore how those perceptions, beauty etc, have changed. My fear is that at some point we stop absorbing this new information - we act so strongly against our beliefs despite knowing how fragile they are, because it’s extremely exhausting to unlearn what we already know, particularly if it’s something learnt from a young age. My intention is to encourage the energy of curiosity, openness and confidence to take control of your own narrative.

I grew up singing pop melodies, writing at my piano, but I think deep down I knew I always wanted to explore something heavier and darker. It’s really been a fun process of experimentation in the last few years, and the more time I spent in clubs, the more I realised what I really wanted to do when I stood up on stage was to provide that same cathartic experience that club music gave me.

It was always my intention to create a project that encompassed a storytelling visual that could sit alongside the music. I just love the idea of world-building and exploring ideas through different mediums. The musical project was kind of written side by side with the film, which I think made it easier to think of the project as a story. I had some demos at the time which were a good starting point, but ultimately it was sitting down with Oscar - the director and also my long-term collaborator and partner - and discussing our shared understanding of the themes of freedom and autonomy that helped us to build a story we felt like we could both connect with. Because we both work full time, we shot the film over four weekends in 2022; it was an extremely challenging project for the team to execute, but with the help of an amazing crew and the versatility of our lead actor, Aoi, we managed to achieve an outcome we were all really proud of.

The film is really a physical representation of the journey that I’ve been describing through overturning and unlearning old ideas. Oscar, after listening to me speak obsessively about freedom and free will, was immediately inspired by William Blake’s quote: “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”
Blake saw the world as being filled with contradictions both within and outside of us, and saw the danger in closing ourselves off to the vastness of these ideas. We wanted the protagonist to step through these doors, represented by the portals in the film, and face the prejudice that prevented them from seeing beyond their pre-determined beliefs. The final challenge is to destroy their perception of themselves, to ultimately be reborn with a new set of perspectives.

Loads! London is such a great place to meet and collaborate with people - for me I love working with artists who really understand their own sound well. It’s so exciting to experiment combining sounds and seeing what comes out the other end. I have a few collaborations lined up - keeping it hush for now!

All I can say is that both shows aim to create the world of the EP through multiple mediums - I want people to touch, hear, see and interact with it. Having played pretty much exclusively solo audio shows, the best thing about these headlines is that it I’m able to collaborate with some amazing local artists in both London and Glasgow who will bring their own interpretations of how this world looks and feels.

More music and collaborations - more visuals, shows, merch, events. I’m really excited for it!