Passing Fixations

Now available!

NOTE: Not available on streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple Music, etc).

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About the album:

We are all individually and societally prone to fixative behavior, yet our fixations — intense though they may be — are predominately fleeting and cursory. Brand obsessions, celebrity obsessions, political obsessions, memetic obsessions, movie obsessions, food obsessions, news obsessions, and any number of other passing fixations hold our attention for a few obsessive days, weeks, or months at a time before we tempestuosly discard them in favor of a more recent novelty.

I call them fixations, but there is a more deeply felt, personal element to these obsessive holds that the external connotations of ‘fixation’ fails to account for. We form our identities and peer groups based on these short-term cultural phenomena, vetting the people around us and even our own behaviors based on their accordance with these modish holds on our attention. Certainly, we hear hawkish proponents of particular societal views expressing a disgust for such transient obsessions, but such a perspective is reactionary and fails to provide context, scope, or method for any path towards real personal and societal betterment.

It is not my goal to prescribe such a path. I am a musician; not a social scientist, politician, or ‘lifestyle expert’. Rather, my goal with this album is to explore a concentrated, focused, and deliberate view of what a constructive ‘passing fixation’ can be. All improvisation is a matter of inherently transitory short-term decision making, and this album is entirely improvised. There was no pre-planning, no rehearsal, no written thematic or conceptual material, no set formatting, no overdubs, and all effects processing was handled live. As such, this album is a willful passing fixation that has been frozen in time. You may find that it does not adhere to certain predispositions of free improvisation — it is not raucous, loud, boisterous, or sporadic; it does not court the converted while alienating the curious. Rather, each track is a meditation of sorts — a designated time to bask in a moment that exists for nothing but itself.

This is music that asks nothing of the listener in terms of political ideology, identity characteristics, or cultural affiliation; yet this is music that asks everything of the listener in terms of time, attention, and engagement. I do not expect that everyone will like this album or be drawn to it, but I ask that those who find something in this album engage fully with what the music offers. This is music to experience completely and bodily; music to be immersed in. Come, leave your passing fixations for a while and listen. This too shall pass.

credits

Andrew W. Saliba - Guitar, Effects Processing
Matthew Smalligan - Drums

Engineered by Cynthea Kelley
Recorded at La Luna Recording and Sound

Mixed, mastered, and produced by Andrew W. Saliba

Album art and design by Imaginaut LLC