Friday November 20 @ Aisle 5
Speakeasy presents…
L’Rain
7pm / All Ages / $21
L'Rain has partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 from every ticket sold goes to Sounds of Saving and their work designing and providing tools, content, resources, and curriculum to young people on how to discover and utilize music to support their mental health and wellness.
L’Rain is the musical project of multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer and curator Taja Cheek. Operating between the worlds of art and music, and outwards into film, fashion and cultural discourse, Cheek is forging a unique path that transcends disciplines to become one of the most vital and adventurous voices for this warped contemporary moment.
Currently the artistic director of Performance Space NY and readying the release of L’Rain’s fourth album, fata morgana, Cheek’s creative impact resonates through her uncompromising commitment to community-building, navigating structural inequality while challenging musical conventions and expectations at every turn. L’Rain is its thrilling manifestation.
Raised in Brooklyn and rooted in the city’s vibrant noise community, Cheek’s world was defined by a tension of contrasts from the off — classically trained yet steeped in DIY iconoclasm, drawn to lush orchestrations and gritty tape loops alike, finding cracks in established forms, taking risks and letting the light pour through.
Fascinated by the schisms, feedbacks and distortions that emerge between identity and society at large, Cheek worked closely with collaborators Ben Chapoteau-Katz and Andrew Lappin to hone a sound for L’Rain that is intense, playful, seductive and deeply personal, deconstructing pop tropes with impressionistic flair and subverting the very notion of experimental music within the Black American tradition.
Where the “psychic collage” of self-titled 2017 debut revelled in the collisions of hi- and lo-fi technology, it was 2021’s Fatigue that propelled L’Rain to a wider audience. Gaining critical acclaim from NPR, album of the year in The Wire and #2 in Pitchfork's best albums of 2021, it set the foundations for 2023 album I Killed Your Dog, which skewed towards ‘90s RnB influences — a bold, bratty, diabolical anti-break-up record that untangled Cheek’s relationship with femininity and the formal musical conventions that others imposed on her.
fata morgana is the daring and ambitious high point of this quadrilogy of L’Rain releases. A heady synthesis of sonic influences, from digi-dub, dream pop and gospel slow jams to tape meditations and crunched thrash metal, it is an album that effervesces in the messiness of life, interrogating power relations while reckoning with self-doubt, self-love and the mirages of belonging and alienation that shape Cheek’s lived experience of the United States today.
This capacity to articulate emotional nuance within a wider societal critique has defined Cheek’s curatorial work with major institutions like Creative Time, the High Line, and MoMA PS1, where she reframed the music programme over several years. Challenging the systemic barriers to representation in the arts, Cheek’s accessible and community-centred approach defined her success as guest curator of the 2024 Whitney Biennial and extends to her current role at Performance Space NY, whose programming has shaped cultural, theoretical and political discourse over four decades.
In May 2026, L’Rain recorded an ambitious live album and concert film with the full band at Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis. It is the latest iteration of a creative sensibility that seeks out liminal realms across mediums, whether working on specific projects (like recent single with Tasha and Jamila Woods) or broad-scope visions, world-building for change within an industry resistant to new forms.
Through the struggle L’Rain persists. Rising to the moment and raising her voice amid the chaos during one of the most divisive eras in American cultural history, Cheek is entering into her power, finding beauty in solidarity and hope in connection — joyful, radical and ready to evolve once more.
- Anton Spice
