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The Absent Observer

by Sinking State

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about

This is the first of two records under the moniker Sinking State.

The Absent Observer is a return to the beginning for me. Music has always been in and around me; the push and the pull, the rise and the fall. I am always reminded that I was the child my father danced and sang with; a subconscious connection between reluctant musicians. My grandmother always saw it. She really saw me, beyond all my hiding and all my defenses, she saw it in me. She noticed my constant humming, my harmonizing to life and my obsessive tapping to the blinker when we drove places. To this day I still make songs to the natural click track of a turn signal.

Even though music had always been around me, I didn’t totally connect with it until I picked up a guitar the summer of seventh grade. When I started, I began playing folk songs at church, becoming a master at G C and D (a very common chord arrangement for beginners and subsequently youth group songs). It was a perfect atmosphere to pretend you were more than you actually were. I was never a technically “good" guitar player and never wanted to be a guitar god. My early practice was obsessive but not focused; determined but not diligent; driven with little direction. I had one official guitar lesson early on but became very frustrated with the rigidity of the teaching. Instead, I would sit in front of MTV and play simple chords for hours. I was never concerned with scales, theory, or the technical side of the craft (and still have little interest). I just had to do it; an impulse akin to breathing.

The perception of music is something that fascinates me and is something I thought a great deal about while making this. Some perceive music as colors or numbers while others can feel it in their bones. I perceive music as pictures and representative images that make little sense when trying to articulate. When I was younger, I thought I felt music as I had such an emotional charge when listening to certain records. I have recently learned that it is the images that evoke the emotion for me.

My songs, my albums; they are echoes of the paintings I see in my head.

This record is far from perfect, technically, but I dove headfirst into the philosophy that the early takes are usually the most honest, however, also tend to be the “loosest.” I kept A LOT of mistakes because they sound honest to me. I worked around the limitations of no budget, no studio, limited recording equipment and less than ideal recording conditions. Listen closely and you will hear the popping of the fire from the Airbnb where this recording started; the whirring of multiple fans when the summer became too much for my little apartment; the clack of an overpass less than a block from my window. All the little noises I had to contend with living in a small apartment in downtown Seattle where the bulk of the recording took place.

This past year has brought me back to a love that I have tried so hard to dismantle. I don’t know if I was ever truly “meant” to be a musician, but for some reason, music will not leave me alone; no matter how hard I try to destroy it in me.

So, I introduce, to those still listening, The Absent Observer

credits

released April 2, 2018

Recorded in Seattle WA by Travis Adams
All music written, recorded and performed by Travis Adams
Artwork by Katrina Snyder

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Sinking State Seattle, Washington

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