The fifth track on
AND was written in 2013 on the way to concluding the For 100 Years project, which celebrated the centenary of Leeton. You can hear an
early version of the song Raucous Chorus in the material screened around town in July that year.
At that time I wanted to add vocals to one of the 'parktronica' tracks I'd recorded and had asked a vocalist to contribute to a track created from recordings at their local park in Wattle Hill. In the end it didn't happen with the vocalist but I'd come to hear my partner Jo's voice in the track.
The
lyrics were inspired by my partner's observation that gallahs are a sound she associates with Leeton. Jo has been visiting this town all her life, as she has family here. Once I started thinking about gallahs I found a lot to write about but it was mostly informed by the comments that she's made about these social birds, including how you can spot the flocks of offspring in contrast to pairs of parents -- which I wrote a
haiku about a while back.
The version of Raucous Chorus on AND is an acapella over recordings of gallahs roosting. I made the decision to drop the backing track made from
Gossamer Park (hear it here) for technical reasons but it also seemed a good idea to increase the variety of material on the album.
