Last month, Sally Anne Morgan announced her fourth solo album, Second Circle The Horizon, out June 20th, 2025, via Thrill Jockey. That announcement was accompanied by her first single, I saw a Heron, on which she revealed “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.“
Her new single, Eye is the First, is a rustling journey featuring a repeated slow guitar appregios and a more narrative-sounding banjo with organic sounding shimmering rustles conjuring the gentle movement of a breeze. While meditative, it also joyously reveals Morgan’s deep bond with nature and how she intuitively interweaves this into her creations.
As mentioned before, the album’s title is inspired by the line: “The Eye is the First Circle, the horizon is the second”, from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay Circle. Like that essay, Morgan’s music presents us with a meditative reflection on the circular nature of existence and the importance of growth and self-discovery, which, like all her work, is delicately shaped by the rhythms of nature.
Sally shared the following: Eye is the First started with a slow guitar riff on my telecaster through my 1950s magnatone amp. I found a slow moving arpeggio-like rift that reminded me of something that could be off Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Green. Then I overdubbed some very gentle, organic banjo – I wanted the banjo to sound like raindrops. This is a 5 string openback banjo that I actually built myself, though most of the credit should be given to Buckeye Banjo’s Greg Galbreth, for walking me through all the steps of the build. I recorded a couple different takes of the banjo, and then edited some out, and in places had 3 different takes playing at once, but because I wasn’t listening to the previous takes while I recorded multiple, it has a very accidental, music-box like effect. I also overdubbed some auxiliary percussive elements, though I was more interested in texture than rhythm. I used a guiro, that came from my Dad’s travels in Latin America, but played very slowly, like trying to make a drone. And I used a rainstick that I picked up at a music store in DC.
Pre-Order Second Circle The Horizon: https://thrilljockey.com/products/second-circle-the-horizon
