L'Rain is back with a new full-length. Taja Cheek's project will release fata morgana on August 14 via Mexican Summer, and the first look is Soulless Cycle, a lead single with a video directed by Mackai Sharp. Mexican Summer announced the record this week, while L'Rain's Bandcamp page confirms the release date and the full 13-song sequence.
The album follows L'Rain's 2017 self-titled debut, 2021's Fatigue, and 2023's I Killed Your Dog. Pitchfork reports that Cheek has framed fata morgana as the culmination of that run, which fits the way this rollout is being presented: less a reset than a fourth panel in a body of work that keeps bending pop structure, noise, R&B, experimental composition, and devotional music into strange new shapes.
Bandcamp lists Taja Cheek as the writer and composer of every song, with Cheek, Ben Chapoteau-Katz, and Andrew Lappin credited as arrangers and producers. The page also credits Lappin with engineering and mixing, Yuka Honda with album sequence, Joe LaPorta with mastering at Sterling Sound, Clifford Prince King with photography, and GENG PTP with design and additional artwork.
The tracklist runs Rumors of Light, With Time, Blue, July 5th, Bedroom Songs, Borderline, Elmyra, Soulless Cycle, No Body / Know Body, Glass Ceiling, I Remember, Birthday, and Church of No One. Soulless Cycle sits at track eight, which makes it feel less like a simple opener and more like a flare from the middle of the record's architecture.
Mexican Summer describes the album as moving through tape meditations, slow jams, gospel, dancehall, and crunched metal influences. That is useful source language, but it also points to why L'Rain remains hard to flatten into a clean genre tag. Cheek's records are built from collage and pressure, and fata morgana already looks like another entry where the seams are part of the charge.