Cherushii was born Chelsea Faith Dolan on September 14, 1983. She grew up in Marin County, California and began playing music around the age of 6, when she was gifted a Casio keyboard. She was classically trained at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as a teenager. After years of written correspondence with Japanese pen pals Chelsea traveled to Japan, where she adopted the moniker Cherushii because it was easier to pronounce than her name. Her introduction to electronic music at raves in the early 2000s set the path for her career as an electronic musician. Cherushii was a champion of women in electronic music and recognized their contributions as a source of influence in a field that often lacks recognition for women. In an interview with Chicago's Reader about the influence of Detroit DJ and producer Kelli Hand Cherushii said "I deeply admire her for all the work she's done, and yet her lack of recognition is so discouraging. In a culture as supposedly forward-thinking as electronic music, women are still so often invisible." From January 2014 to December 2016 Cherushii was host of radio shows on UC Berkeley's community radio stationKALX, where she devoted sets to Italo Disco, Detroit techno, or contemporaries in the local electronic music scene such as David Last and Roche. In August 2015 Cherushii co-founded a dance music night called Run the Length of Your Wildness to provide a space for local electronic musicians to showcase their music.
Death
Cherushii was scheduled to perform at the Ghost Ship warehouse on December 2, 2016 as part of fellow music producer Golden Donna's tour. At approximately 11:20 pm a fire started inside the warehouse, trapping attendees inside. The Alameda County Coroner's Bureau confirmed 36 people trapped inside, including Cherushii, died of smoke inhalation. A public memorial was held on December 17, 2016 at Public Works in San Francisco.
Music
In 2013 Cherushii signed with 100% Silk and released Queen of Cups, a four track album described as an "expansive blueprint of slow-burn deep house but threads it through with waves of synth wash, acid flash, and simmering strobe glow, for a loose yet composed suite of 21st-century free-spirit pulse generation." In 2015 Cherushii released Starlight Express, Nobody's Fool, and Far Away So Close, 3 EPs. In 2016 Cherushii released Manic. After Cherushii's death 100% Silk released a memorial edition tape of Memory of Water, previously out of print.
Gear
Cherushii opted for hardware analog gear at a time when laptops were transforming electronic music production and was known to carry heavy suitcases full of equipment to her shows. She used a Yamaha RS7000 before advancing onto the Elektron Octatrack of which she was quoted as saying: "Like most Elektron gear, learning to play it is an ongoing journey that you definitely won't complete in the first few months. But its ability to sequence both audio and MIDI makes it a great machine for live sets, and you can't beat its compact size for travel." Cherushii also used the compact Access Virus TI,a digital multitimbral polyphonic synth. Among her gear was also a hand built and highly modified X0xb0x, which she received as a gift from fellow musicians.
