MARIA SOMERVILLE - LUSTER - LIVE IN SF

Presented by Recombinant Media Labs & Gray Area 

Friday May 23, 2025

Gray Area Grand Theater, 2665 Mission Street San Francisco, CA 94110

Doors: 8PM

Borne of her roots channeled through the mystical emerald wilderness of rugged West Ireland, Maria Somerville crafts a vast and vital vocalized presence rooted in raw feeling and mood-driven atmospheres. Fusing post-industrial pulse, hypnotic drones, and folk-etched melodies, her music evokes a thematic sense of longing, of connection through distance with transformed interwoven threads of gothically smattered motifs and melancholic tribulations.

To discover early a new voice rising through the same shadows once shaped by Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil, is a rare and timely concert opportunity. Maria asserts her newfound recognition as one of our era’s most promising nu-gazers.

Following the simpler cult wavelength of her 2019 LP debut All My People, Somerville now steps forward her legacy continuation with Luster, her landmark sophomore full-length premiering on the legendary 4AD label — home to past and present fellow sonic explorers like Bauhaus, Dead Can Dance and Clan of Xymox amongst others.

Think My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Mazzy Star, Julie Cruise, and Grouper - masterworks outside the 4AD canon, but whispered through a different storm of Maria’s own unique mythic reach into and beyond the dusky dream pop glass ceiling.

Sure, she’s inspired by the early 4AD and Cure catalogues, but Somerville’s slow-core flow is far more profound and personal than pure pastiche; integrating traces of Irish Folk, Fennesz-pilled ambience, and down-swung, echoed strums, sparse percussion and clandestine field recordings.

If you loved or need to newly absorb the quintessential ethereal 4AD canvas and character from its formative decades, then this Maria Somerville concert is for you.

Opening set by Leila Abdul-Rauf — a Bay Area dark ambient musician weaving trumpet, voice, and drone into somber, penetrating soundscapes.

The Recombinant Media Labs organization was founded to research the qualities and artistic potential of Spatial Cinema. It does so by means of Experiential Engineering; exploring processes that propagate the aesthetic and technological boundaries of panoramic AV exhibition.

RML acts as producer and presenter of hybrid artworks and performances based on spatial media synthesis; intermodal works using image, light, sound, and other disseminated sensorial media in three-dimensional space. The CineChamber is RML's curated, nomadic platform under the artistic trajectory of founder & director Naut Humon plus a superhuman crew.