Dioramas by Andrew Chalk

On Andrew Chalk’s new album for An’archives, Dioramas, he returns to the art of the miniaturist, after the long-form exploration of 2024’s Songs Of The Sea. It’s an appropriate mode of address given the title – each of these fifteen pieces indeed feels like a replica of a specific scene, rendered in miniature. As with much of Chalk’s music, they set out to explore humble terrain, a thread of melody in slow motion, or a weave of texture, sometimes in aquatic repose, moving like slow tides.
There’s a becalmed warmth to much of Dioramas, along with some curious developments: a pronounced folksy lilt to the melody that’s turned over and over, like a jewel slowly spinning on a dial, in “The Carrach”; the lush churchiness of the organ in the hymnal “The Changes”; the stretched strings that quiver and whisper on the closing “Lonely House”. These subtle changes can seem profound at first blush, but they simply highlight aspects of Chalk’s music that we sometimes miss; they eventually settle into the scenery.

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