Multi-instrumentalist Sally Anne Morgan has shared the bucolic new single “Flowers of Shandihar”, taken from her new album Second Circle The Horizon, out on June 20th. Emblematic of Morgan’s ability to blend her intuitive, improvisatory playing with distinctly Appalachian Folk sounds, “Flowers of Shandihar” layers a gorgeous, tactile banjo loop with lighter-than-air fiddle melodies. Morgan’s award-winning fiddle playing flows gracefully with story-like arcs that bounce atop the banjo’s steady rollick.
On the track, Morgan notes:
“I recorded a snippet of banjo and then cut and pasted it on my recording software. No doubt there is a more sophisticated way to achieve this but this is as tech savvy as I get. Then it was fun to improvise fiddle on top of it, and actually it turned out quite lovely. I did a few different takes on the fiddle, and then at some point they both come in and harmonize with each other — not something that I was intending when recording, but I noticed when listening back. So it ends with a bit of a fiddle dialog. The title is inspired from an archeological dig in Iraq called Shanidar where they found Neanderthals buried their dead with flowers. Somehow in my head it became locked in as “Shandihar”. I often find myself thinking about our paleolithic ancestors, what it means to be human: making music, burying our dead with flowers.”
“I wanted to capture the feeling of walking outside and encountering organic nature sounds, some with patterns, some with a randomness that also verges on its own kind of pattern,” Morgan says about Second Circle. Abstraction in pursuit of free exploration of that which can’t be put into words, balancing with an intentional structure of song lies at the album’s core. Morgan gave herself into the free instinctual pursuit of ideas, while her experience resulted in pieces that move organically in structured arcs. “I have played so many fiddle tunes, the fiddle tune, the structure, the melody, are at the root of all music I make, whether I want them to be or not,” Morgan continues. “Old time fiddle music is the seed that grew into the part of my brain that makes music, and everything I do somehow seems to come back to that. I think something gets lost when you’re too focused on honing and refining everything. Someone who is not focused on virtuosic playing, but more rustic simplicity and spaciousness, there is life and energy to it, electricity.”
Raised on old time and Appalachian folk traditions, Morgan’s artistry embodies the rich life of the communities and natural world she surrounds herself with. Based in Alexander, NC in the thick of Appalachia, and edge of the Pisgah National Forest, Morgan’s blend of traditional technique and distinctly modern compositional approach are infused with the sounds of her garden, surrounding pastures, forests and mountains. The rhythms of nature, its flora and fauna, are inseparable from her work which is in constant conversation with the people and places around her. Second Circle The Horizon is a meditation on returning, uncovering the new within the familiar and recognizing the familiar within the new. The album features guest synthesist Sean Dunlap (Field Patterns) and hurdy-gurdy player Brian “Geologist” Weitz (Animal Collective), as well as longtime collaborator/mixer Joseph Dejarnette.
