Episode 22: L'Rain

For Episode 22, we spoke with songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and curator Taja Cheek, on the brink of her group L’Rain’s fourth record, fata morgana, out today on Mexican Summer. Taja is a lifelong New Yorker with roots in underground cultural organizing and the institutional art world alike; in addition to her work as a musician, she is also currently the Artistic Director at Performance Space New York. In the first half of the show, we spoke about the new album and what it means to challenge an audience in today's political and social climates. For the second half of the show, we return to our Listening Habits series to learn about how Taja listens to music on a daily basis, her relationship with music technology, how her work as a curator influences her approach to music discovery, how a music recommendation text message from Kyp Malone of TV On the Radio changed her life, and much more. Lastly, Max and Taja go way back, so we also talked at length about the makeshift venue they used to run together out of Taja's basement in Brooklyn, how that period shaped her creative trajectory, and DIY politics in general. That will be available for Patreon subscribers as a bonus segment early next week, so please sign up to hear material like that, our monthly Headlines episodes, and access our Discord community. Thanks again to Taja for joining us and thanks for listening!