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**L'Rain - L'Rain**
★★★★☆

The story of L'Rain begins, paradoxically, with an ending. When Taja Cheek's previous band dissolved in 2017, she found herself adrift in Brooklyn's sprawling musical landscape, armed with nothing but a loop pedal, her ethereal voice, and an insatiable hunger to push boundaries. What emerged from that creative chrysalis was something entirely unprecedented—a sonic universe so personal and experimental that it demanded its own mythology.

L'Rain's self-titled debut, released in 2021 on Mexican Summer, reads like a fever dream transcribed into sound. Cheek, who performs under the L'Rain moniker, has crafted an album that exists in the liminal spaces between genres, refusing to be pinned down by conventional categorization. This is ambient music with teeth, R&B with cosmic pretensions, and experimental composition with an unexpectedly warm heart beating at its center.

The album's DNA is spliced from disparate influences—the meditative sprawl of ambient pioneers like Grouper and Tim Hecker mingles with the rhythmic complexity of neo-soul and the textural richness of contemporary classical music. Cheek's background as a classically trained musician becomes evident in her approach to structure, or rather, her gleeful abandonment of it. Songs breathe and contract like living organisms, building tension through repetition and release rather than traditional verse-chorus dynamics.

"Fly, Die" serves as the album's emotional centerpiece, a seven-minute odyssey that begins with Cheek's multi-tracked vocals creating a choir of selves before dissolving into a soup of processed guitars and field recordings. It's here that L'Rain's vision crystallizes most clearly—this is music designed for deep listening, for losing oneself in the spaces between notes. The track's final third, where all elements coalesce into something approaching a traditional song structure, feels like emerging from underwater into brilliant sunlight.

Equally compelling is "Find It," which showcases Cheek's gift for melody within chaos. Built around a hypnotic guitar loop that sounds like it's being played through several layers of gauze, the song features some of the album's most direct vocals, though "direct" is relative in L'Rain's universe. Her voice floats above the instrumental bed like smoke, occasionally coalescing into recognizable words before dissipating back into pure texture.

The album's opening statement, "Suck Teeth," immediately establishes the record's aesthetic—a collage of found sounds, processed vocals, and instrumental fragments that shouldn't work together but absolutely do. It's a bold gambit, essentially daring listeners to adjust their expectations before the journey even begins. Those who accept the challenge are rewarded with one of the year's most immersive listening experiences.

Cheek's approach to production deserves particular praise. Working primarily alone in her home studio, she's created a sonic world that feels both intimate and vast. Every element seems to exist in its own acoustic space while contributing to a cohesive whole. The use of field recordings—snippets of conversation, environmental sounds, the detritus of daily life—adds a documentary quality that grounds the album's more abstract moments in lived experience.

The influence of Arthur Russell looms large over these proceedings, particularly in Cheek's willingness to let songs exist in a state of beautiful incompletion. Like Russell's best work, L'Rain's compositions feel less like finished products than glimpses into ongoing processes, musical thoughts captured mid-formation.

Since its release, the album has garnered critical acclaim from outlets ranging from Pitchfork to The Wire, establishing Cheek as a significant voice in experimental music's current renaissance. Her live performances, which feature real-time looping and vocal manipulation, have become legendary among those lucky enough to witness them, with each show essentially creating new versions of the album's songs.

The legacy of L'Rain lies not just in its individual merits but in its demonstration that experimental music needn't be cold or academic. Cheek has created something genuinely innovative while maintaining an emotional core that makes even the album's most abstract passages feel deeply human. In an era of algorithmic playlists and shortened attention spans, L'Rain stands as a beautiful argument for the power of patient, immersive listening.

This is music for 3 AM contemplation, for long walks through empty cities, for moments when the ordinary world reveals its hidden strangeness. Taja Cheek has announced herself as an artist to watch, and L'Rain serves as a stunning introduction to her singular vision.