The debut album Rowan : Morrison (the chosen moniker of the musical collaboration between The Rowan Amber Mill and Angeline Morrison) titled 'In the Sunshine We Rode the Horses' is today officially released on CD.
'In the Sunshine We Rode the Horses' is a 17 track, 70 min album, is available as a Deluxe CD Edition which contains three prints, three metal badges, a six panel booklet containing
lyrics and liner notes, a sticker, and a retro vinyl CD-r all housed in a deluxe tin. You can order it
from either the
Rowan Amber Mill Bandcamp
site
(where you can also listen to some of the tracks) or from the MillerSounds Big Cartel store.
The album will also be available on the usual digital platforms from 30th January
2019.
The album has been garnering some very nice attention already including: album of the week (on Along the Tracks Radio Show); it has also been placed in critics top ten albums of 2018(?) (Goldmine Magazine and Penny Black Music
Magazine) and a wonderful review in
Terrascope Magazine.
It has also received lots of airplay including on BBC 6 on Stuart
Maconies Freak Zone and BBC local radio.
Here is the review by Shindig! magazine - "****/5. Rowan Morrison is the combined talents of Stephen Stannard (The Rowan Amber Mill) and Angeline Morrison (We Are Muffy). It's also the name of the missing girl from The Wicker Man, and whilst this isn't explicitly referred to, that film's theme of the revenge of the old ways underpins this album. It's an epic meditation on ideas that the pagan folk genre often hints at, but has rarely articulated as fulsomely as this, a rising up of nature against the modern age of property development and fracking. As you'd expect, a key influence throughout is the folk revival sounds of the early 70s, with plentiful dulcimer, flute and accoustic guitar. Orchestral interludes in the English pastoral tradition also add colour, and Morrison plays the maiden-child role perfectly. Highlights include the beautiful melancholy of On Ridgeway Fields, the spooky synth augmented An Ending Just Begun and the yearning, Broadcast-ish The Meadow's Call. "
Joe Banks, Shindig! magazine.
Here is the review by RnR! magazine - "****/5. "With any album the music is more important than the packaging, but sometimes the packaging is so good it just has to be mentioned. The CD version of this album comes in a small metal tin no less, with three badges, a sticker, three prints and a lyric booklet on very high quality paper. It's a real object of desire for the music collector.
The music therein is made by The Rowan Amber Mill and Angeline Morrison, the former alt-folk veterans of more than a decade, the latter the producer of solo albums and band collaborator in the same vein for a similar period. It's a concept piece set along the Ridgeway that concerns itself with the despoiling of the earth by man and the eventual fightback of nature and
the consequences of that.
It's as ambitious as the packaging and as successful, with vaulting orchestrations, hypnotic vocals, and powerful words richly evoking the natural world and its beauty. It draws the listener in and envelopes them in its world and with its pastoral feel and quiet grandeur In the Sunshine We Rode the Horses recalls nothing so much as Vaughan Williams's mighty oeuvre. A timely emotive and powerful work. "
Jeremy Searle, RnR magazine.
In the Sunshine We Rode the Horses is set within
both the real and imagined histories of the Ridgeway ancient path, and surrounding landcscapes (Avebury, Silbury Hill, Stonehenge, Uffington White Horse chalk figure etc).
It explores the impact of man and his machinery on this sacred
landscape, and how nature finds a way to fight back against such
attacks.
If you want to keep up with all the minutiae of what the Rowan Amber Mill, are getting up to, then why not check them out on their FaceBook, Twitter or Instagram presences. At these places, they regularly reveal their internal monologues, musings, recommendations and quite a lot of photos of trees. Why not pop over and say hello!
