Craig Padilla & Marvin Allen: Weathering the Storm
Spotted Peccary Music
The fruitful partnership established by ambient-electronic producer Craig Padilla and guitarist Marvin Allen continues on their third collaboration Weathering the Storm, the title naturally evoking pandemic-related associations. Both are well-seasoned musicians, Padilla boasting a discography pushing past forty releases and Allen a multi-instrumentalist who's contributed to numerous recording sessions, jingles, and short film soundtracks over the years. While the duo project with Padilla constitutes Allen's first foray into the ambient-electronic realm, the guitarist swims in these waters as if born to it. Signifying that the latest release should be seen as the final part of a trilogy, the cover illustration includes a so-called “Umbrella Girl” on the cover, as do the earlier Strange Gravity and Toward the Horizon releases.
The two clearly share an affection for '70s prog and krautrock, as evidenced by musical passages that evoke Tangerine Dream and Pink Floyd during their Phaedra and Wish You Were Here eras, respectively. Nothing about Weathering the Storm feels like a tired retread, however; instead, the material plays like a contemporary riff on classic styles, and a seamlessly effected one at that. The duo's sincere affection for the music of that period is never in doubt.
With winds whooshing amidst organ and ambient guitar textures, “The Prodigal Sun” calls to mind “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” (the opening half), especially when there's a similar sense of slow-build to the duo's nineteen-minute travelogue. Burbling synthesizers and molten guitar add to the sense of anticipation for the sonic expansion that will follow this psychedelic intro, and it arrives six minutes in in the form of TD-styled pulsations and synth washes. Morphing into a lumbering colossus, the music powers forward, blossoming in real time into a towering, guitar-fueled and programmed drums-driven epic. It's easy at times to hear Allen as his David Gilmour to Padilla's Richard Wright (or, alternately, Allen as a guitar-wielding Edgar Froese to Padilla's Christopher Franke and Peter Baumann).
“Aquatic” changes things up by working field recordings of rain drizzle into an otherwise peaceful meditation for guitar, organ, and piano. Whereas some pieces call forth a heavy, distortion-drenched snarl from Allen, “Sunflowers in the Wind” finds him indulging his pretty side with lustrous picking and e-bow-like phrases. “Weathering the Storm” similarly flexes its instrumental muscles in coupling electric and twelve-string acoustic guitars with analog synthesizers and mellotron. An occasional serene setting provides shelter from the storm (two gentle “A Matter of Time” interludes and the celestial “Liquid Heaven Part 2”), but for the most part Padilla and Allen's third opus is a high-energy collection that puts considerable distance between them and producers who favour the more soothing side of the ambient-electronic spectrum.May 2023