Spotted Peccary Music artists Craig Padilla and Marvin Allen reunite for their fourth release Unfolding Skies, bending the ambience and turning up the intensity of their previous albums into an electronic post-rock sound that pulses and shimmers like the stellar landscape that inspired it.
Refining a technique of composing material through live studio improvisation, extracting vibrant elements, defining structure and perfecting the musical conversation, Padilla and Allen meticulously crafted Unfolding Skies into an amalgamation of sound expressiveness. This live approach brings Allen’s virtuosic guitar work center stage, blending familiar tones of classic rock, ambient and prog into something new. Here, Allen’s guitar is a voyager through Padilla’s electronic landscapes, the wonder of discovery glimmering in every note.
On opener “Framework,” Allen’s wistful electric guitar arcs through chimes like wind through a rainstorm before a stuttering beat and searing solo lifts the piece to a triumphant climax. “Undercurrents of Change” paints a picture of wanderlust in swirls of synth evoking Vangelis and 70s prog. On the epic “Architects of Time,” fiery guitar makes a comet’s trail through film score panorama before a marching beat bursts from the depths in stunning space rock pyrotechnics.
All of Padilla and Allen’s collaborations have featured the Umbrella Girl, a representation of everyone trying to find their way of existence in the chaos of the world. Unfolding Skies is the next step in that journey, but even bolder, brighter than before—driven on Padilla’s propulsive beats to a place like sunlight after rain, clarity after confusion, a sonic journey only Padilla and Allen could deliver.
Genre: Ambient Electronic / Melodic / Cinematic, Sequencer / Classic EM / Berlin-School
Craig Padilla & Marvin Allen | Unfolding Skies | CD