‘Anxiety Attack’ is a song from Stephen Cummings’ latest album ‘100 Years From Now’ that was recorded before Stephen had his stroke (according to Stephen, it’s 20 years old!).  This extended version is 44 minutes long.

The track is a collaboration between Stephen and the album’s producer Robert Goodge of I’mTalking and Essendon Airport fame. It features Chris Abrahams of the Necks on keyboard.

Here’s Stephen and Robert explaining the extended version.

From Robert:  My memory of this is Stephen had or was going to write a spoken word piece called anxiety attack… He wanted first to do a song called that and then to have music to go along with him reading out the text to the anxiety attack stories… so we did the single and i remixed the raw material in various permutations…For some reason Stephen must have decided not to do the spoken word and we put the whole thing on ice…

Stephen thought Geoff Hales and Chris Abrahams would be perfect to create a dreamy soundscape…at the time I had access to a Fender Rhodes I thought it would be a great keyboard for Chris to play.

The long version came about because we joined all the unused mixes together as a fun thing to do. The dreamy soundscape of the music and lyrics lends itself to the extended version.

Stephen: Geoff Hales is a really good percussionist and he lived nearby and so he brought some Indian percussion instruments and we recorded it in my garage. We recorded Chris at Robert’s at Highett on this old Fender Rhodes and I wrote the lyrics and did the vocals. I had a long period during that time where I had a big fear of flying and caught interstate trains when touring. I think that is where the lyrics stemmed from and as well I knew a lot of people who had similar experiences. We probably did it 20 years ago. It was going to a spoken word thing but then we went cold on that and didn’t really fit in with anything I was putting out at the time.

When we recorded 100 Years From Now, we thought it would fit in with the album so Robert found it and we are now finally able to release it which I am happy about as I always liked the track.