Biography
Taja Cheek, a Brooklyn native, produces ethereal and cross-genre compositions under the name L'Rain. These pieces examine grief, transformation, delight, and defiance by assembling fragments of soul, psychedelia, gospel, musique concrète, and further styles into an intricate collage. Her first recording appeared in 2017 as a self-titled debut shaped partly by her mother's death. Fatigue followed in 2021, another exploratory effort tracing the emotional weight of personal and collective shifts. The more straightforward I Killed Your Dog arrived in 2023 and was framed as an "anti-break-up" record.
Raised in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood, Cheek learned bass on her own and joined multiple groups while still in high school. At Yale she served as music director for campus station WYBC and launched Anti-Fling, an underground concert series. After graduation she returned to Brooklyn and worked as a curator at New York institutions including MoMA PS1. She kept performing with bands and began solo work in 2015, playing guitar, bass, keyboards, and percussion while editing tapes and samples. Her mother, Lorraine, died during the making of the debut, prompting Cheek to name the project in her honor. Astro Nautico released L'Rain in 2017; a deluxe edition with remixes by Eartheater and Glasser appeared digitally the next year.
Fatigue, the second album, was tracked at studios in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, drawing on contributions from twenty musicians plus archival voice recordings of Cheek and friends. The meticulously layered result confronts the effects of change and questions listeners about their own responses to it. Mexican Summer issued the album in 2021. Fatigue became L'Rain's breakthrough, drawing widespread acclaim and heading The Wire's year-end list. With the more confrontational I Killed Your Dog in 2023, Cheek considers what it means to inflict hurt on those closest to her.
Raised in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood, Cheek learned bass on her own and joined multiple groups while still in high school. At Yale she served as music director for campus station WYBC and launched Anti-Fling, an underground concert series. After graduation she returned to Brooklyn and worked as a curator at New York institutions including MoMA PS1. She kept performing with bands and began solo work in 2015, playing guitar, bass, keyboards, and percussion while editing tapes and samples. Her mother, Lorraine, died during the making of the debut, prompting Cheek to name the project in her honor. Astro Nautico released L'Rain in 2017; a deluxe edition with remixes by Eartheater and Glasser appeared digitally the next year.
Fatigue, the second album, was tracked at studios in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, drawing on contributions from twenty musicians plus archival voice recordings of Cheek and friends. The meticulously layered result confronts the effects of change and questions listeners about their own responses to it. Mexican Summer issued the album in 2021. Fatigue became L'Rain's breakthrough, drawing widespread acclaim and heading The Wire's year-end list. With the more confrontational I Killed Your Dog in 2023, Cheek considers what it means to inflict hurt on those closest to her.
Singles
