Vocalist/bassist Sera Timms is ready to show the fruits of her labor with Black Mare, who last played at The Complex mid-May, and featured new songs "Fighting Birds" and "Babalon's Fold" for fans who had little chance to see the songwriter since her previous show with Glaare, Lightsystem, and He Whose Ox is Gored almost one year ago. The former member of critically acclaimed Black Math Horseman, Timms' project expands on the atmospheric post-metal qualities of her previous output: drifting, evolving folk dissonance in blank verse. It's characteristically minimalist, yet retains craftsmanship and aesthetic reminiscent of ISIS, Chelsea Wolfe, and Emma Ruth Rundle.

Black Mare performs at The Echo on September 13th with visiting SF bands Them Are Us Too and Chasms. Listen to "Low Crimes" from Black Mare's split with Arizona's Lycia. - Ryan Mo, image credit: David Lee Dailey

The androgynous alter ego of Andrew Clinco (Marriages, Black Mare), Deb DeMure, is not drag — bluntly put, it's a genderfuck medium that channels a windfall of ideas. The occult scholar sees DeMure's physical manifestation as an oracle for Drab Majesty, a growing collection of self-produced music bearing marks of late '80s dreampop, new wave, and post-punk. The project's newest album Careless envelops listeners with modulating guitars, grand cathedral reverb, and effected baritone vocals that hearken back to acts like Asylum Party, Xymox, Cocteau Twins — gothically elaborate, it coalesces the masculine and feminine, the Abrahamic and the arcane. And DeMure takes no credit for the songs' conception.

Says Clinco in a Noisey interview: "We’re just vessels channeling these ideas and making sense of them."

Drab Majesty performs at the LA Psych Fest on September 20th with JJUUJJUU, Earthless, Litronix, and more. Listen to "Everything Is Sentimental" off the newest album Careless, with a second vinyl pressing on Dais Records early October. - Ryan Mo