“It’s not the content. It’s the model” says Ash Buchholz who is Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker (USS). It’s a philosophy he lives by and one that drives his unique style. Ash has an ability to take what exists around him, what he has learned through experience and what he hears and sees, and combine them in unexpected ways resulting in a new experience completely separate and distinct yet wildly familiar. His music is a tremendous mash up of every genre he ever immersed himself in, sewn together with a folk singers gentle hand. There are the nuances of pop, driving danceable beats, ska, classical symphony and hip hop nestled beneath a voice evocative of Cobain’s tortured wail. The lyrics are clear and poetic, smoothly skating between questions of drug addiction and mental illness and love and hope. The overall result is a kind of star gazing pop step -intrinsically uplifting and incredibly raw. Ash describes this mash up as a program he is continually uploading into. Live USS reminds of an outdoor concert you saw as a kid. There is a kind of wholesome wide eyed enthusiasm, an interaction between audience and singer and an unabashed camp that brings you back to a time when being cool was having fun and puppet shows were a necessary part of a concert. At 28, this Toronto based singer songwriter is finally living outside of his head. From a childhood and early adulthood spent mostly alone and often seriously ill, Ash learned to live inside his mind, imagining a world outside his confined body. It is a visualization technique for coping and creating that he employs to this day. He practices his guitar there, writes his songs and visualizes his live shows. Welding the C Drive was written while Ash worked in a factory. His hands occupied by repetitious factory line work Ash listened to books on tape- philosophy and sociobiology, Neil Young, and Monty Python and imagined an album. It is illustrative example of Ash’s ability to think outside the box to create without confine- to take what has been given to him and make it work. His live show incorporates this same methodology. Buchholz surrounds himself on stage by a blender, a heart monitor, his ipod, a tape player and the Chlorophyll Harmonics (his plants) using each as a component to an overall theatre of everyday objects made beautiful by imagination. In a time of ultra choreographed, perfectly made up and vacant pop stars USS is a welcome alternative: a raw talent, disarmingly sincere, thoughtful, self aware and without pretense. USS has set up a new model- where a rock show is inspiring, entertaining and compelling and the artist is a human being.