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Few artists embody the contradictions and possibilities of Los Angeles like Geneva Jacuzzi. A pioneer of low fidelity, bedroom recorded avant-pop, her work spans not only music, but performance art, live theater, set design, costuming, makeup, and set decoration -the auteur theory realized as ongoing art practice. She is simultaneously championed by underground venues, DIY spaces and art galleries, as well as prestigious institutions like The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), The Broad Museum, and The Getty. Across two decades of activity, Jacuzzi has toured her surrealist strain of theatrical synth-popand staged dada exploratory installations in more than forty countries across the world. Geneva Jacuzzi’s debut album is 2010’s cult phenomenon Lamaze, itself an assemblage of 4-track and 8-track recordings and “demos”, spanning from 2004 to 2009. Birthed from the last vestiges of pre-internet Los Angeles, she kept company with goths, freaks, weirdos, bohemians, and unknowns, all crystallized into one greatest hits package. Her music is realized in simulacrum with the stage and moving image; on Lamaze, each song is a visage, whether the mime (“Do I Sad?”), or the neanderthal teleported to a far away land (“Future Past”). These ideas were actualized in both the short film “Dark Ages” with director Jennifer Juniper Stratford, and in the ongoing odyssey of live performances over the following decade. To see a Geneva Jacuzzi show is to create a suspension of disbelief in your own reality: a hitparade of pre-recorded melodies, live vocals and raw personality; part Italian Futurism, French Surrealism and Dada, all leading to mysterious parts unknown.
On the road, she released a series of coveted tour only CD releases (Secret Demos 1+2), with her second official album Technophilia following in 2016. Technophilia’s sleek production built on the foundations of her earlier work, strengthening the resolve of redefining synth-pop and darkwave, from thedirty disco of “Casket” to the Balearic highs of “Cannibal Babies. “Following the first wide release (and reissue) of Lamaze, Geneva started work on her third album, Triple Fire. Analchemical reaction of pop sugar, chaos energy, swaggering synthbass, Haçienda drum machinery, and sultry vocal spellcasting, the album is her most collaborative to date. Taking the director’s chair, she created a new vision for the future of mankind – an eclectic spectrum of moods to the continuum of human emotions: “Funny, sexy,sad, scary, witty, hopeful, menacing. Eventually it deconstructs, turns into a party, and then ends sweet and soft. Like a horror film, watched in reverse.“Wildcard electronic pop and clever post-apocalyptic camp, the album crystallizes her mastery of new wave melody and discoaerobics, alternately freaky, glamorous, nihilistic, and romantic. A woman of a thousand masks,and the Queen of the Underground, Geneva Jacuzzi stands poised to continue shape-shiftingher kaleidoscopic spectacle far into the 21st century.
RIKI
RIKI is a dark art pop project based in Los Angeles. In 2024, RIKI spent the first half of the year touring the US, Mexico, and Canada in support of her sophomore release, GOLD. RIKI’s 2024 plans include several festival dates (October and November), headlining shows, and recording the highly anticipated follow up release to GOLD.