Andrew Chalk 'Dioramas' ltd. ed LP
January 2025
We've managed to get a few copies of Andrew's new LP. Released by the french An'archives label, this is an edition of 350 on black vinyl, 180g, offset printed jacket with obi, large insert and a postcard. It looks beautiful & it sounds beautiful!
From the label :
On Andrew Chalk’s new album for An’archives, 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.
Review from Vital Weekly by Freek Kinkelaar : I am sure most readers of Vital Weekly are aware of Andrew Chalk. Active since the mid-1980s and associated with projects such as Organum, Ora and, to me personally, the most intriguing one, Mirror, Andrew is a comforting fixture on an ever-changing ambient-experimental music scene. Following his two recent albums in 2023, one a collaboration with Daisuke Suzuki, the other with Jean Noël Rebilly, and the more recent solo album Songs Of The Sea, we now have Dioramas. And what a beauty this is and in so many ways! As music always comes first, we’ll start with the fifteen pieces of this album – juxtapositioning Songs Of The Sea, which featured two side-long tracks. Diorama, much like the principle of a diorama, a model representing a scene using three-dimensional figures or, more intriguing, a painting, which can be viewed through a peephole simulating changes in the scene in colour and direction, offers brief glimpses into Andrew’s world. The music, played on
organ, piano, and an array of non-specific scene-setting instruments (though I think I can detect a koto in there, too), is warm, humble and modest. There is much attention to recording details: think room, presence, and (reversed) reverb. The various brief sketches and playing seem, at times, random until a sudden (fragment of a) hesitant melody appears. As a whole, this album does not tell you anything new about Andrew Chalk – rather than a new book, Dioramas is like being offered the next few pages from his ongoing diary. Like a diary, thoughts and ideas are recorded in slight melodies, almost superficial notes, scribbled lines – until you start reading them properly and realise they are all individual glimpses of Andrew’s reality: becalming wondrous music. The package is another thing – I admit that I consider An’archives one of the most interesting and worthwhile labels. Take Dioramas; the cover features a modestly-toned image and a wrap-around paper obi, displaying the label owner’s fascination with Japan (a recurring theme in almost all An’archive releases). Inside the album cover is a postcard and a heavy carton insert. The album features a smaller-sized label, making the disc look like an ancient shellac 78 rpm album. And a final applause should go to the plastic-lined brown inner sleeve. A detail, perhaps, but like the music, the packaging is all about details. There are only 350 copies of this album, so do not hesitate to act on the idea of purchasing! (
