FEATURE: Spotlight: L'Rain — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

L'Rain

___________

BECAUSE she has a new song out…

I wanted to spend a bit of time spotlighting the amazing L’Rain. Under the mononym L'Rain, Brooklyn native Taja Cheek has quickly become an acclaimed and sought-after figure in New York Experimental music. I am going to bring in some interviews and a review for her eponymous debut album of 2017. Before then, make sure you check out the awesome new track, Two Face. With a highly-anticipated second album due, Pitchfork reported the news:

“L’Rain is the musical project of Brooklyn experimentalist and multi-instrumentalist Taja Cheek. Today, L’Rain announces her sophomore album Fatigue, out June 25 via her new label Mexican Summer. She has also shared the track “Two Face,” which arrives with a visual created by Reese Donohue of Tempo Studio. Watch that below and scroll down for Fatigue’s artwork and tracklist.

L’Rain’s self-titled debut came out back in 2017. Find out where it landed on Pitchfork’s “The 20 Best Experimental Albums of 2017”.

Before bringing in a review for that debut, there are a few interviews that provide some more depth and detail about Taja Cheek and her band. In this interview, we learn more about Cheek, her band and musical direction:

“In 2017, Brooklyn-raised multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and tape manipulator Taja Cheek used the moniker L’Rain to release her first eponymous album on Astro Nautico Records. Though this project was dedicated in name and spirit to Cheek’s mother Lorraine, who passed away shortly before its release, the material on the album has gone on the take many forms and now takes shape through live performance as a three-piece band. Alongside her bandmates, Long Island-native Ben Chapoteau-Katz and Buz Donald, who moved to New York from LA five years ago, Cheek constantly breathes new meaning into the compositions.

Individually, the members of L’Rain have been a part of Kitchen programming in various ways over the past year, in performances and L.A.B. programs. Now, on November 21 L’Rain will take the stage as part of a double bill with Roland P. Young at Public Records. The Kitchen’s Rayna Holmes sat down with the band ahead of their show to discuss new music, their band’s history, and the ways explorations of identity unfold within their performances.

The name “L’Rain” for many people has so many different iterations: it’s a reference to your mom, a moniker for Taja for the people who don’t know your name, the name of an album, and also the name of the band. How do you navigate all of those different meanings? Buz and Ben, what does the name mean to you?

Taja Cheek: I feel like that’s kind of evolving. It started out being very tied to my mom, but I didn't really realize the consequence of calling the band L’Rain would mean that people would think that’s my name too, so it became an alternate name for me. It also refers to a very specific part of me physically–my forearm tattoo that reads “L’Rain.” Some people don’t even know that it has anything to do with a person that existed, [and it’s kind of true that it doesn’t] because that wasn’t her name. So it’s kind of like a fictionalized version of my mom and also of me, combined to be a version of us. I am always really insistent that it’s not [entirely] a solo project. I don’t really think it exists that way. The group, I hope, is collaborative in many ways in which it wouldn’t be what it is without the people that are in it, so the project also is a band. It evolves and it kind of has to. They are compositions that I wrote, but then they become something else.

Ben Chapoteau-Katz: It’s true that we’ve become a band and we’re collaborative, but it is all of Taja’s art and all of her music. I’m trying to support what she’s doing. So as far as the naming goes, that’s a part of her vision, to me.

Buz Donald: I mean, it looks like a band, but I think it’s more of a situation. My interpretation is that someone had a vision, someone had an experience, and I’m listening. I’m just there to listen.

How did the band come together?

TC: I’d already made the record and was at a large institution in New York where another musician was rehearsing, and Ben was a part of the band. He asked me if was a bass player, and I said, “how do you even know who I am, I have no idea who you are!” It turned out that we had a friend in common. [Later], I was looking for someone to play saxophone and was talking to our mutual friend, who suggested I talk to Ben. We started playing together, and then Ben recommended Buz.

BCK: Me and Buz had a jam session two years prior, [but] probably hadn’t played since. Then I played a couple rehearsals with Taja and thought, “I know a guy that I feel would get into this.”

TC: Ben lied at first: he said “I really only play sax” because that was what I was looking for. But I was [also] looking for someone who was a synthesist or who knew how to play keyboards. So Ben later said, “yeah I can do that too!” And then he went out and bought a synth and taught himself how to do it.

BCK: I mean, I heard the music and wasn’t just not going to be a part of the project. You only get so many opportunities to do this in your life—to do something that really resonates with you. I was like, “I’ll learn how to do whatever you need me to do.” So yeah, sorry I lied.

BD: Before L’Rain, I was trying to figure out what I was doing in New York. I [was] going to jazz jams trying to figure out how to play jazz, [because] those were the only open forums around here for people trying to get [into the scene]. And then [Ben] recommended me for [this group] and when I got there the music was super hard but super heartfelt. And I was like, “man this is something I could get into.”

When re-composing the album into a multi-person performance, was the combination of “synthetic” and “traditional” instruments a part of that?

TC: For me, that’s just a continuation of the sounds on the record. I like using archaic, ineffective modes of recording, because I feel like they have a certain kind of urgency or immediacy. I record vocals on iPhone earbuds. People think about electronic music being [just] keyboards and synths, but [for example] guitars—that signal ends up being electronic and digital at the end of the chain. Mostly everything we’re listening to at the end of the day is electronic, actually. [Laughs] It’s just not really thought about that way. All the things we think of as electronic and digital and future [also] have counterparts that are very analog. There’s always a real world component for all of these things that are thought of as completely digital”.

Even though the L’Rain album was released four years ago now, I have been looking back as the story behind it is fascinating. It was a particularly tough time for Cheek during the recording. One can feel urgency, passion and experimentation through a wonderful debut. In this interview with Fly Paper we learn more about a personal tragedy that occurred during the production, in addition to how Cheek got into music:

“Brooklyn’s L’Rain (a.k.a., Taja Cheek) is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist whose self-titled full-length is an exploration of liminal space: those magic, shimmering thresholds between trained musicianship and intuitive gesture, between tape loop and neurological loop, between religious and secular, and even between grief and celebration.

Cheek’s mother died during the production of the record, and the loss casts the work with this urgent energy that sharpens and dulls depending on which of the in-between spaces she’s occupying at any given moment. Field recordings reprise into thick psych-soul vocal stacks, skittering jazz-inflected percussion phrases settle into heavy half-time grooves, synths wash out under Cheek’s perfect, arpeggiated Johnny Greenwood-esque electric guitar iterations.

“I used to spend hours practicing cello and piano as a kid,” says Cheek, “turning my mistakes into songs. I think that planted the seed for L’Rain — an economy of ideas, organic processes, starting from a place of modesty, banality, and turmoil.” Here at Soundfly, we lovingly call that “Incorrect Music.”

How did you get into music, and what was the path you followed to get to where you are?

I used to spend hours practicing cello and piano as a kid, turning my mistakes into songs. I think that planted the seed for L’Rain — an economy of ideas, organic processes, starting from a place of modesty, banality, and turmoil.

What does music truly “mean” to you?

In high school, I used to describe my relationship to music as a dead marriage. Pretty ‘tween of me, but I’m still not entirely convinced it isn’t true. Not that music isn’t intimate or fun or beautiful or new, even decades later. It is! But it can also be paralyzing and isolating, especially for anyone who is the least bit self-conscious.

How would you describe your sound?

I’m still trying to figure that out. But lately I’ve been telling people that it’s “not jazz,” and that feels cheeky enough to be right.

How did you choose the players on your self-titled album and how did they come together on the record?

I played the vast majority of the parts on the record myself, either in the studio or in my bed, where I record all of my demos. But there were some others who contributed:

Alex Goldberg, who plays drums on the record, was my best friend and arch nemesis; I trust him infinitely. Nearly every record I’ve ever played on I’ve made with Andrew Lappin, who is a co-producer and engineer on L’Rain; he plays one or two guitar parts, too. Jeremy Powell plays saxophone, and he came highly recommended from Lappin”.

In the studio, I’d give Jeremy references, and like a chameleon he would play in the style of any soloist I’d mention: Brecker playing Chaka Khan, Pharoah Sanders, etc.

I am going to repeat a little bit of what was said in the interview above. Taja Cheek is an incredible songwriter and artist, so I wanted to bring together several interviews so one can get a fuller sense of her who she is and what her music represents. In a 2018 interview with Tom Tom Mag the subject of her mother’s passing was raised:

“TTM: You’ve talked openly about your mother becoming ill while working on the album, and how grief manifests in different ways throughout it. How do you incorporate vulnerability into your music? Your everyday life?

Vulnerability is something I think about a lot. To be honest, I find it increasingly difficult to figure out the boundaries of my personal and private life. Even more so when my art is so tied to my lived experience. I haven’t figured it out; I assume it will be a process, not a fixed state at which I’ll ever arrive.

There is a part of me that feels equal parts guilty and thankful for being able to share a glimpse of my grieving process with strangers. I love building opportunities into my life for me to think about my mom. It’s overwhelming but it also brings me so much joy. That dichotomy is something I’m super interested in: grief and joy, emotional uncertainty. Anyone who has dealt with adversity in their life understands this as a normal part of life. It is a survival mechanism for those of us that live in societies that systematically exclude and abuse us. We learn to find joy when it’s almost certain that there is none. We’re light scavengers. All of this said, my record documents many tumultuous elements of my life, and I’m only prepared to talk about some of them.

TTM: What atmospheres do you try to foster in your shows, and through your music more broadly?

Right now, I mostly play in bars and clubs, but I’m disinterested in the vibe that these venues nurture. I like the idea of turning these spaces upside down: making them quiet, vulnerable, and reflective, instead of loud and irreverent. Or, maybe I’m illuminating the ways in which these two modes of being are more related than separate. It’s an interesting production dilemma for me to think through ways of disorienting a bar space with limited time, resources and money. Instead of production pyrotechnics, I have to search within myself for small sincere gestures. It’s a valuable exercise in exploring the limits of performance if nothing else. How do you create a lot with a little?”.

Before wrapping things up, I want to bring in a review for the L’Rain album. Not all critics were kind. It is an album with its own sound; very different to anything else you will experience. This review highlights, whilst the 2017 album can be disorientating, the rewards are huge:

“At times, the result can be disorienting. The songs on the album have unconventional structures propelled by changes in mood, sonic breakdowns, or complete relocations into new soundscapes. One moment, you might be in the warm swirl of synth and cascading guitar in “Heavy (But Not in Wait),” and the next, at the beginning of “Stay, Go (Go, Stay),” you will find yourself exiting a car as a raw and beautiful voice sings softly; you will start in a psych-pop jam on “A Toes (Shelf Inside Your Head),” and end in the same song in glitchy art-pop; and “Go, Stay (Stay, Go),” the mirror of the second song, completely turns you around with its backwards audio. Also disrupting the listener’s sense of bearings are the clever ways in which L’Rain transitions from song to song, bleeding endings into beginnings, as in the sinister child sample and carnival synth at the close of “Bat” and start of “Alive and a Wake.”

In an album marked by the exuberance of noise, the clearer, quieter moments carry particular weight. Those grow even heavier in the context of the album’s creation; the artist was in the middle of recording when her mother, Lorraine, died, and Cheek’s album title and stage name are a tribute to her. Though L’Rain contains no dominant sentiment, it offers up glimpses of grief and reflection—in the meditative flutter at the end of “Which Fork / I’ll Be,” in the wailing horn on “Heavy (But Not in Wait)”, and, most achingly, in the birthday voicemail, completely untouched, called, “July 14th, 2015.” If you’re looking for sadness in the album, odds are you will find it. L’Rain leaves room, though, for the many other insane and incongruous parts of grief. It’s possible that there’s even a place for joy and transcendence in it, too.

If you’re looking for anything in L’Rain, it’s likely you will find it. By embracing deliberate but unfettered experimentalism in her debut, the artist opens up her strange and rich world, in turn allowing the listener the same freedom to explore. The ride can be unnerving, but the rewards are great”.

If you are unfamiliar with L’Rain, get involved and follow her social media. With a Fatigue out on 25th June, it is a perfect time to explore and bond with a rising talent. I think that we will see L’Rain on the scene for many years to come - such is the strength and depth of the music! The songs are so extraordinary and unique. Just play them loud and…