| “gorgeous” – KEXP “meditative” – Ottawa Citizen “the perfect mid-winter listen.” – CBC Music “beautiful and stately…truly inspired work” – Tome To The Weather Machine Stepping into an altogether aerial, blue segment of slanting light. You are arriving, you are aware. The second album from Montreal-based composer Nick Schofield draws the listener into a state where texture, form and gesture unfurl in federation. |
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Composed entirely on a vintage Prophet-600 synthesizer, the eleven compositions on Glass Gallery imparts a series of effortless yet interconnected moods from within the instrument’s signature palette. The central inspiration for the album is Ottawa’s National Gallery of Canada; specifically, its light and space. The building’s massive, iconic glass atrium shares a clear aesthetic with Schofield’s music: a feeling of great possibility, capacity and lightness all at once. One need only experience a few pulsing seconds of lead single ‘Mirror Image’ to sense the interplay of abstract geometry on display (think Tchaikovsky scoring a ballet on a Buchla). – listen to CBC q feature // read a Q&A with Ottawa Citizen – Across the album, the compositions visit several soundworlds couched under the ever-expanding canopy of ambient: Tokyo’s first decade of environmental music, the algorithmic compositions of Laurie Spiegel and the new age of California’s digital deserts, among other rigorously elegant subgenres. Though Schofield’s approach is decidedly more northern than these: the fifth piece, ‘Molinarism’, explicitly references Canadian abstractionist Guido Molinari whose polychromatic paintings hang prominently in the aforementioned gallery, while ‘Kissing Wall’ gives the listener a warming sense of sun-caressed snow.Taken as a whole, Glass Gallery marks the arrival of Schofield as a major compositional voice in the Canadian soundscape. With this sophomore effort, the longtime artist, producer, radio host and community collaborator quietly hones his sharpest mind: this is a work that is sure to endure through the years and reveal new moods as the seasons move in concert with the sun. |