Sally Dige Carves Her Own Path on New Record Holding the Sun

From shimmering synth-pop beginnings to the darker edges of post-punk and, most recently, the acoustic warmth of her new record Holding the Sun, Sally Dige has built a career defined by reinvention. The Berlin-based musician and visual artist approaches her craft with a fiercely independent spirit writing, producing, and creating visuals entirely on her own, while embracing the freedom and resilience that come with a DIY ethos.

In this conversation with REVERIE, Dige reflects on the evolution of her sound, the chance encounters that shaped her latest album, and the ways her move from B.C. to Berlin continues to inspire her. What emerges is a portrait of an artist unafraid to push beyond her comfort zone — always searching for the next creative endeavour.

Sally Dige. Photo credit: Anni Porrasmäki.

REVERIE: You’ve built your career as a completely independent artist - writing, producing, and even handling all your own visuals. How has that creative autonomy shaped your artistic identity over time?

Sally: I’ve had to learn so many different roles and I’ve come to accept that I’m not a master of any one thing, but I’m good enough to make it all work together. I’m the classic “jack of all trades, master of none.” I know that my guitar playing is simple, my lyrics are basic and that my recordings are a little unpolished, but when everything comes together, it works (at least I think it does). I’ve learned to stop being so precious about every detail and start seeing the bigger narrative I’m trying to convey. In that sense, I sometimes feel more like a director or producer - overseeing and orchestrating the whole picture and knowing when to bring in outside talent to elevate it further.

Being DIY has taught me great life skills of being versatile and resilient. It has taught me to be resourceful, adaptable and unafraid to learn. I remember once in university, a professor said to the class, “the best life skills a person will learn will come from joining a punk band,” and it’s so true. Learning how to problem-solve and make things happen without having everything at your disposal (financially, in resources, contacts, etc) will teach you incredible life skills. Just as importantly, being DIY has given me the freedom to create work without compromise.

Independence has also connected me to the wider DIY culture. Many of us DIY artists are constantly learning from one another, sharing tips, tools, resources and contacts. This sense of community has been very rewarding. Even though you are technically an “independent artist,” you don’t feel isolated because you are part of a network of artists moving forward in solidarity. More artists are picking up the tools, teaching themselves and sharing knowledge and that is amazing to see. The music and film industries are notorious for gatekeeping, but DIY culture smashes that down.

REVERIE: After your second album, you mentioned feeling like you were repeating yourself. What was the moment you knew you needed to break away from your established sound and how did you approach things differently on your new record? 

Sally: I was trying to work on new songs for my third album and found that I was writing in the same way as I did before with my second album. Deep down I felt I was lacking some excitement. Everything started to feel too formulaic. Around that time, my friend Adam had lent me his guitar and I got to play the guitar after so long of only having access to a synth. On the side, I began sketching out new songs with the guitar, including what would become the skeleton of my track, “It’s You I’m Thinking Of.” When I played it for friends, there was such a positive reaction that it made me think that I should finish it. 

One day my friend Magnus invited me to his apartment up the street. He had all kinds of traditional instruments scattered around his apartment including a mandolin. I remarked how I always wanted a mandolin, to which he responded by handing it to me and telling me to take it home. (It later turned out that the mandolin wasn’t his to lend out, and the real owner was furious, but that’s another story.) That night I wrote the mandolin into my track, “It’s You I’m Thinking Of.” From that point on, I decided to scrap the electronic tracks I’d been compiling for the album and start fresh, with the concept of using synths as little as possible and leaning into acoustic sounds instead.

My idea was to focus on a different instrument for each song - ideally something I’d never played before. This is where I kickstarted my addiction to scouring the internet for cheap second-hand instruments. After I finally finished my album, after six exhaustive years -  much like my second album -  I wanted distance from it - to let go - and as a result I sold most of the instruments that I had collected over the years, including the main synth I used to write my second album. When the mandolin owner came back for his mandolin, I was happy about it too. He looked like Jesus. I had gathered all these tools to create the album and once the album was finally released into the world, I wanted to release the tools back into the world as well. This made me feel so free and light.

REVERIE: Many of the instruments on this record were secondhand finds from the pandemic. Which ones surprised or inspired you the most?

Sally: The mandolin was the most inspiring for the album. It was what sparked the concept of embracing the acoustic sound and bringing in all these different stringed instruments onto the album. I like how sparkly and surprisingly sad the mandolin sounds.

As for some other surprises, I got a traditional small 5-stringed Finnish kantele in a small Finnish town. I even got a one-day crash course on it during a Christmas visit in Finland. The teacher was an older woman, a local in the town, whose son is a pop star in Finland with a recent scandal. 

I recorded the kantele on another song that didn’t make it onto this album, but it will be part of a future release which I’m working on now. With some effects the kantele can sound like a dreamy shoegaze guitar, or like a mighty sword being raised to the sky.

The German zither was quite hard for me to play. All the many fine strings so close to each other that made my eyes blur when I tried to find them quickly for more complicated melodies. I watched a video of a man playing all these nice songs with the zither on YouTube, like the “Sound of Silence.” I wish that I could play like him, but I ended up playing the zither in a very simple way. I used it in my track, “Voice of My Heart.”

Sally Dige. Photo credit: Anni Porrasmäki.

REVERIE: Why did you name the album Holding the Sun? What themes or topics do you explore on this record? 

Sally: Holding the Sun is me realizing that I, like all of us, already carry the sun within. The sun is your inner power, strength, brightness, intuition and hope. I’ve always loved fairytales and mythic folktales, and I resonate with how the sun is used symbolically in those old stories. I wanted the album to also be a continuation of the story from my second album, Holding On. It was written during a very dark and desperate time in my life, a period of hopelessness and helplessness. I wanted this record to be about inner strength, perseverance, and hope. Once you’ve fallen so low, you have only to look up and begin the climb with hope and faith in your heart; otherwise you have nothing. 

The soundscape came from my desire to create music with acoustic and string instruments instead of synthesizers. As for the lyrics, I wrote about what was pulling me at that moment. Themes of grief, melancholy, nostalgia seemed to surface quite a bit, but also hopefulness and the trust in myself to navigate my mysterious path.

REVERIE: How did you approach the imagery for Holding the Sun to reflect its warmer, organic sound?

Sally: Because Holding the Sun is a lot softer and organic than my previous albums, it was important to convey a feeling of organic softness, but also with mystery. For some of the shoots, we experimented a lot with light - for example with my album cover but also with my music video, “Sow the Path.” For my album cover, we specifically chased the right sunlight that was delicate and sparse in its placement. I wanted it to feel like a soft palm of light was touching me in a meaningful way, rather than blanketing and scorching me. There were other elements that were brought into the imagery to add to this organic-soft-feeling, like shooting the music videos on Super 8, having hand-drawn titles, textured backgrounds, and processing the album cover photo with additional layers of painting.

REVERIE: You were based in B.C and are now living in Berlin. Did this move influence you as an artist? 

Sally: It sure did. Berlin was, and continues to be, such an inspiring place for artists and creative weirdos. It’s a city where people move from around the world to live and work full-time as artists, rather than treating music or art as a part-time pursuit or hobby. That full-time dedication to art is really inspiring to me. In Berlin, the artist’s work is taken seriously. Many artists work from home, creating studios in their apartments, and there’s a strong DIY ethos here.

I also find the culture in Berlin much more transparent when it comes to each other’s practices, fees, navigating the system, and offering support. In Vancouver, it felt more competitive, closed, and gatekeepy. Perhaps that’s because Vancouver is smaller and people are more insecure about opportunities.

Being surrounded by a community of artists also affects you in subtler ways. Artists generally live on a different rhythm, off-beat from mainstream society, so it’s like living in your own weird, colorful world - and that energy inevitably inspires and influences your work.

REVERIE: Now that Holding the Sun is out, do you see yourself continuing down this acoustic path, or is another reinvention already taking shape?

Sally: I hope to always reinvent myself and find new challenges and explorations in my music and art. It doesn’t have to be big changes, it can be subtle, but there needs to be something new to explore; some kind of exciting discomfort. That’s what makes it interesting, and life for that matter. I think this quote by David Bowie is a great one to leave here - an artist whose identity was intertwined with reinvention:

“If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”