L’RAIN

ABOUT this week’s guest:

credit: Mackai Sharp

Back in June, I made my biennial visit to the Berkshires for Wilco’s festival Solid Sound which takes place on the campus of the contemporary art museum Mass MoCA, and I can’t think of a better setting to both see this week’s guest perform, and to reunite with her to dig deep into her newest collection under the moniker, L’Rain. For newcomers, Taja Cheek is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, songwriter, composer, and performance curator, whose work defies genre, and draws from a lifetime of musical exploration. This Brooklyn native was classically trained on recorder and piano, and taught herself to play bass so that she could play in bands, and became part of the rock, DIY, noise, and experimental music scene in New York. While studying music in college didn’t go according to plan, she did become music director of her college radio station which further expanded her sonic palette, and inspired her to work with loops and samples. The interplay of lo-fi and technology, and her own myriad instrumental abilities and influences lay the groundwork for a collage-like approach for her musical project, L’Rain. She released her self-titled debut out in 2017, and finding trusted collaborators in Andrew Lappin and Ben Chapoteau-Katz, Taja continued to construct, deconstruct, and build out her musical universe with her critically hailed sophomore album Fatigue in 2021, followed by her bold and masterful third L’Rain album, I Killed Your Dog in 2023, which was named among the Best of the year by the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Pitchfork. This week we welcome back Taja Cheek aka L’Rain as we celebrate the arrival of what she is calling the completion of a quadirology, her brand new album, fata morgana.

CHECK OUT THIS WEEK’S SHEROES RADIO HOUR PLAYLIST ON QOBUZ: