SRSQ - “The Martyr“ (Official Audio)

“The Martyr“ from SRSQ’s album, ’Unreality.’ Out now on LP/CD/Digital: 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. Produced by Matia Simovich of Inhalt, Unreality 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: Instagram Twitter Bandcamp Artist’s page Linktree Dais Records: Instagram Bandcamp Twitter Website Facebook Subscribe LYRICS: The rain falls around me, and from beyond a distant fog Come shadows that could render us asunder The waves crash around me, pulling towards a deepest dark I struggle just to keep from going under It’s all I can do A dream world, a glory, a call from the depths of hell I’m sickened by the terrible reminder A fantasy, a fools escape, a hopefulness, a sweet embrace. Illusions that this horror is behind us It’s all I can do But I might fall to pieces Might not pull through But if I fall to pieces, it was not you A solid place, a secret want, a dream too dangerous to hold Deny myself despite that I have found you A shattered fist, a solid wall, continuously rise and fall Ignore the dreadful thought that it’s impossible to have it all