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.

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.

Available from Dais Records.