“Mirror Image” by Nick Schofield

I recently finished reading Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, her delightful and imaginative follow-up to 2004’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. The novel’s titular protagonist inhabits an otherworldly house containing an infinite number of halls filled with statues depicting all manner of mundane and fantastical people and creatures, and a good deal of Piranesi simply chronicles his exploration of this strange space.

Now, I’m not saying that Piranesi should ever be adapted into a movie or TV series (though we did enjoy BBC One’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell a few years back). But if it ever was, then the producers might want to consider using Nick Schofield’s synthesizer music for some inspiration, if not the score.

“Mirror Image” — the first single from his upcoming Glass Gallery — is filled with bell-like chimes and fluttering tone clusters (courtesy of Schofield’s vintage Prophet-600 synthesizer) that are by turns serene and surreal. In other words, the perfect soundtrack for exploring and contemplating endless halls filled with exquisite statuary. (And oceans. Did I mention the oceans?)

It certainly doesn’t hurt that “Mirror Image,” like all of Glass Gallery’s songs, was inspired by “the light and space” of Ottawa’s National Gallery, which contains plenty of statues and sculpture of its own. Recommended for fans of Steve Hauschildt.

Glass Gallery will be released on February 5, 2021 by Backward Music.