To commemorate five years since the release of the Coordinates album in May 2018, I’ve pulled together different bits and pieces of sound collage ideas that were never used for the album, some previously unreleased tracks that were recorded during the Coordinates sessions at Incremental Records and some re-recorded 2012-2015 era demos to create this seven track EP appropriately titled Fragments.

The release of Fragments will be the last of the five-year anniversary releases by The Currawongs.

I always intended to release an EP of extra tracks six months after the release of the Coordinates album. Unfortunately, Coordinates ended up being a troubled and difficult second album to make for The Currawongs at times. With work on the album spanning April 2015 to May 2018, I was pretty much burnt out after its release, and decided not to pursue putting together the planned accompanying EP. In fact, being so burnt out is what led me to hit upon the idea of embarking on the five year retrospectives of previous releases by The Currawongs, so I’ve now come full circle.

For the cover of Fragments I’ve used all of the images from a series of photos by Jade Halloran and placed them in order on a photo grid. I had previously used one of the photos as the cover for ‘Into The Unknown’, the first single from the album and another for the album cover of Coordinates. I have also moved away from the Morse Tech font used for those releases and chosen something more legible!

‘We’re Going On Another Adventure’ was created in 2017 as a shorter version nod to the title track of Coordinates without the Ghost Notes inspired dramatic finale. ’65 Million Light Years Away’ and ‘Saturn in Virgo’ were both demoed when I started the Coordinates album in April 2015, however I cannot remember why I chose not to persist with these two tracks? I was recording a lot of longer songs for Coordinates, so thinking perhaps these two were deemed too short for the album. I actually have a demo version of ’65 Million Light Years Away’ somewhere dating back to 2011-2012. ‘Ghost Head Nebula’ and ‘Mission to Laika’ are from the same era of delay, chorus, flanger and phaser pedal experiments I did at home in 2013 that have featured on other recordings by The Currawongs over the years. 'Mission to Laika' also features a cameo from my dog Max (2009-2019).‘Ceres’ was recorded at Incremental Records during one of the Coordinates sessions in January 2016. The original version of ‘From The Other Side of the Heliosphere’ was titled The Sickness and recorded during the same 2013 home sessions as ‘One More Before I Walk Out The Door’ from the 2014 eponymous debut EP, and the 10 minute accordion track ‘The Ghosts of Menin Gate’ from Cracticidae. The re-recorded version of ‘From The Other Side of the Heliosphere’ also features the original feedback intro used on the 2013 demo version.

Fragments was done in two and a half sessions with Cameron Smith at Incremental Records – Cam’s influence is pretty obvious across these tracks. Very happy with how this one turned out. Thanks for taking the time to read this and have a listen.

Ross.
(The Currawongs)