A Paper Doll’s Whisper of Spring

The stream of music that flows from Andrew Chalk’s home studio, whether solo or in collaboration, shares a limpid, melancholy mood; it’s easy, on the surface, to parse what’s going on, but there are mysterious undercurrents to the music that render it emotionally complex. On A Paper Doll’s Whisper of Spring, he collaborates with Vikki Jackman (piano) and Jean-Nöel Rebilly (instruments) on a gorgeous collection of pieces; Jackman’s keyboard notes drop into pools of reverb like water droplets shaken from wisteria vines; Chalk and Rebilly swoon around this material with hazy, half-remembered tones that seem to shimmer into near-silence. It’s profoundly moving music, all the more remarkable for the way it does so much with relatively little, and despite its surface placidity, it’s far from ambient flotsam.