Sunday, August 26, 2018

SRSQ // The Martyr

Photo © Kristin Cofer

SRSQ  (pronounced  seer-skew)  is  the  solo  project  of  Kennedy  Ashlyn  (vocalist/keyboardist  of  Them  Are  Us  Too).  Creative voids aren’t filled, but rather holes left that push the edges of the present into new realms of consciousness. SRSQ’s pulse began after the  death  of  Kennedy’s  closest  friend  and  TAUT  collaborator  Cash  Askew, a casualty in  the  sudden and tragic Oakland  Ghost  Ship  Fire  of  2016.  Driven by loss, SRSQ became the vehicle for Kennedy’s transformative process, exploring nuance, nostalgia, reflection, and reconciliation, manifesting in the aural landscape of Unreality.




The Martyr is the first single from the upcoming debut album 'Unreality'



As a debut, Unreality is entrance into a new form of  storytelling, traversing the present while pulling from a deep swath of experience, immersion, and sound. Like the impulse it pulls from, each song evokes the complex duality of meditation—where simple intersects with infinite. Ambient  synthesizers  that  approach  harshness,  relentless  arpeggiations  act together with Kennedy’s  vocals as a lush weapon, weaving cloudlike fables over orchestration that’s familiar and foreign. Trance-like at times, yet always rooted in cadence and structure, the synesthesia of sound and feeling takes cues from the delicate miasma of Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, or Dead Can Dance, using their example as the ground floor for building a new temple of frequency. Kennedy proves an adept architect of rhythm, using sequenced electronics as a deep backbeat that allows the harrowing beauty of her vocals to lead the journey.


Produced  by  Matia  Simovich  of  InhaltUnreality  is  simultaneously  crisp  and  full,  each  tone  and  note  occupying  its  own  unique  sonic  world - grief butted against power, tracked to a heavy heartbeat.


SRSQ Unreality will be out October 26th on CD, LP, and digital formats via Dais records.