SRSQ - Ever Crashing - VINYL LP

SRSQ s 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 musical collaborator Cash Askew, a casualty in the 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.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 rich 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 and 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.

Ever Crashing, the second LP by Kennedy Ashlyn aka SRSQ [pronounced 'seer-skew'], is the summation of a nearly three-year journey of soul searching, songwriting, and self-discovery InchI became myself in the process of making this record.Inch From the first choral swells of opener InchIt Always Rains,Inch it's clear this collection exists on an ascendant plane, capturing an artist in super bloom. Every song hits like a single, heaving with guitar, synth, strings, live drums, and oceans of Ashlyn's astounding voice, balletic and illuminated. The tracks gleam with detail, often assembled from as many as 100 separate tracks, all of which were written and played solely by Ashlyn - a feat of world-building as daunting as it is devastating.For her, however, the process is intrinsic and intuitive - even a matter of survival. Her 2018 solo debut emerged in response to the tragic Ghost Ship fire in Oakland, which took the life of her bandmate and best friend Cash Askew. Similarly, Ever Crashing began materializing in the wake of an ADHD and bipolar disorder diagnosis, prompting a profound personal overhaul. Ashlyn cites such periods of turmoil as a muse of sorts, when Inchsongs begin to echo within me,Inch gradually reverberating clearer and more vividly. As melodies and arrangements come into focus, the songs act like containers, vessels in which to externalize and exorcise tumultuous emotions, a transformation she memorializes in the climax of InchÉlan Vital Inch InchReeling in and out of deep despair / I am saved by song.InchFrom swooning end credits balladry (InchDead LossInch) to orchestral slow- burn torch songs (InchAbyssInch) to dizzying shoegaze heavens (InchSomeday I Will Bask In The SunInch), the album exudes a sense of aching grandeur and bewildered joy, rich with triumphs hard won and lost loves never forgotten. Melodies pirouette and crescendo in dazzling, eleva

A tribute to the late Elliot Smith featuring indie-rock notables including the Decemberists, Hello Sequence, the Thermals, Swords, Dolorean, and others. Ten percent of the net proceeds will be donated to the Elliot Smith Foundation's charity, Free Arts for Abused Children.