Padilla, Craig

Artist: Craig Padilla + Howard Givens
P: 2017
Seasoned veterans of the ambient and deep-experiential forms of electronic music, Howard Givens and Craig Padilla continue their soul-searching quest to express a symbiosis of music with contemplative self-examination and enlightenment on their second collaboration, BEING OF LIGHT. Comprised of four tracks, the 70 minute BEING OF LIGHT conveys the duo’s interest in longer-form expressions of harmonic color and ambient electronic subtlety. Viscous sonic textures are extracted from an expansive palette of electronic and acoustic instruments as the music steadily unfolds, ebbing and flowing through muted moments of tension, release, mystery, and peace. As with the duo’s previous highly-regarded collaboration, LIFE FLOWS WATER, this album is built around a combination of modular, vintage analog, and digital synthesizers, only this time they are blended together with grand piano, electric guitar, and various other expressive instruments. Weaving melodic phrases and rich textures through rhythmic structures and sequences, Givens and Padilla create deep interludes and expansive passages that exemplify the inspiration behind the project – to musically express the state of awareness that comes through the discovery of one’s “inner being” and pure essence. With BEING OF LIGHT, Howard Givens and Craig Padilla emphasize a visceral and enveloping experience, conceptually envisioning the album as a topology of energy where the individual is a single point of light, solitary and self-aware, yet melded into the sum of all light, complete in the totality of existence.

Artist: Craig Padilla + Howard Givens
P: 2015
Life Flows Water is a collaboration between Spotted Peccary Music’s founder and creative guru Howard Givens (Brain Laughter) and SPM veteran electronic virtuoso Craig Padilla. It is a meditation in form, opening and closing with tones from a Tibetan bowl, and flowing, evolving continuously through seven impressions of deeply nuanced ambient electronic artistry. Featuring a profound array of electronic instruments from classic vintage and modular synths to modern digital keyboards, this delicately choreographed work is really about inward expansiveness – like true meditation – focused on a purity and simplicity in an abstract fulness. The music is inspired by the moments and experiences that brought these artists together for this collaboration, and by the realization of a consciousness awakened from the steps taken on the discovery of this new path. Padilla states: “We had been waiting to perform live together for quite some time. Finally, due to numerous life changing events, the opportunity to create and perform new music had arrived and once we got started, the music continuously and effortlessly flowed from our hands and into the synthesizers; two collaborative energies finding a common singularity of creation. The music describes this creative moment perfectly: getting lost and found in the present moment; taking an inward journey to communicate with the soul. This recording is the document of a specific moment and a testament to the process of simply being.

Artist: Craig Padilla & Marvin Allen
P: 2021
Electronic music veteran Craig Padilla and electric guitar virtuoso Marvin Allen team up once again for their second collaboration on the Spotted Peccary Music label, Strange Gravity. The album is a compelling example of what is possible when two gifted musicians from different musical backgrounds are pulled into a common orbit and develop a creative synergy. Riding the waves of inspiration, the duo deliver an honest and spellbinding blend of ambient electronic atmospheres, Berlin school sequences, and classic rock flavored guitar textures. Interspersed with introspective moments – and even a few memorable melodies – the music on Strange Gravity moves through an array of moods that range from hypnotic and dreamy, to powerful and epic. Swirling electronics, pulsing synthesizers, soaring guitars, and hypnotic rhythms twist and turn throughout the album’s 65 minutes, gliding through the stratosphere with an effortless freedom. Craig Padilla & Marvin Allen’s Strange Gravity is the perfect follow-up to their debut album Toward The Horizon, and an impressive example of space rock at its finest.

Artist: Craig Padilla & Marvin Allen
P: 2019
With TOWARD THE HORIZON, Craig Padilla and Marvin Allen have created an inspiring atmosphere of explosive melodies, classic Berlin school sequencing, electric guitar, and haunting ambient synthscapes that electronic, ambient, and rock music fans will thoroughly appreciate. From the opening guitar strain that shines like a familiar diamond, to the peaceful electronic meditation that marks the album’s exit, TOWARD THE HORIZON ebbs and flows with an adventurous energy; always moving, onward and outward through unknown realms, ever forward to the next farthest destination.

Artist: Craig Padilla & Marvin Allen
P: 2023
Weathering the Storm is the third collaboration by electronic ambient veteran Craig Padilla and guitar virtuoso Marvin Allen, on Spotted Peccary Music. Like their two prior releases, Toward the Horizon and Strange Gravity, this latest project sees Padilla and Allen build from their unique styles a dreamlike and dramatic electronic landscape that only they could create.
Not only a trilogy in sonic stylings, all three of Padilla and Allen’s collaborations feature the Umbrella Girl depicted on the cover. She represents all of us looking for our own way of existence amidst the chaos of the world. She is an open-minded seeker, and these soundscapes are her explorations.
Weathering the Storm is a hypnotic fusion of early 70s krautrock and modern electronic ambient production. On the title track, Allen’s 12-string acoustic guitar synchronizes with Padilla’s analog synthesizers, standing their ground against a swirl of electric guitar and mellotron. On “Aquatic,” Padilla and Allen incorporate found sounds—wind and thunder from a tornado forming, trucks roaring down a wet road, rainfall—into a Tangerine Dream-inspired texture of reversed piano and organ. Six other tracks complete the vision of the Umbrella Girl’s exploration in her mythical world.
On Weathering the Storm, Craig Padilla and Marvin Allen have once again blended guitar and synthesizer, old and new, into a captivating sonic odyssey. 

Artist: Craig Padilla & Skip Murphy
P: 2008
The music was recorded with numerous analog synthesizers and sequencers and so we thought we'd point that out to everybody by titling the album "ANALOG DESTINATION".
(And, of course, we tried to use every synthesizer we own!)
This album is a scorcher with our "Northern California-School Style"! The energetic sequencer patterns take center stage with energizing melody lines soaring high overhead in a rich field of live electronic sound!
The CD has been mastered directly from the original 24-bit files by Bruce Turgon, former bassist for the band Foreigner.

Artist: Craig Padilla & Skip Murphy
P: 2006
Elegant and deep sequences overlay picturesque melodic structures that weave in and out of consciousness. Merging Berlin School stylings with Space Ambient sensibility, the Northern California duo of Craig Padilla and Skip Murphy explore new sonic territory, while keeping firmly rooted to the influential electronic music from the golden age of sequencing. Using the latest virtual instruments alongside rare analog synthesizers, this music explodes old genre barriers while simultaneously forging new sonic possibilities.
CRAIG PADILLA
Ensoniq ESQ-1, Ensoniq Mirage, Yamaha TG-33, Alesis QuadraSynth, Emu UltraProteus, Roland U220, Roland SH-32, Roland SynthPlus-10, Korg EA-1, ARP 2600, Sequential Circuits Pro-One (x2), ARP 2500 Sequencer, and various effects
SKIP MURPHY
Yamaha KX-88, Yamaha TX7, Alesis QuadraSynth Plus, Korg Mono/Poly, Korg DW-8000, Ensoniq ESQ-1, PAIA 9700 Modular, Technosaurus Microcon, Roland U220, Nord MicroModular, Absynth, FM7, Doepfer Maq 16/3, Lexicon Vortex and other effects
 

Artist: Craig Padilla & Zero Ohms
P: 2005
Craig Padilla and Zero Ohms have both had successful independent careers as ambient musicians, but this CD marks their first collaboration... and the result is amazing!
Path of Least Resistance combines melodic flute and synth melodies with soaring, pulsing, sweeping soundcapes for a mesmerizing sonic experience. This CD has been worked, reworked, polished and primed by the artists and the care in it's creation shines through! Path of Least Resistance will be one for every space music and ambient aficionado's CD collection.
Produced, engineered, recorded and composed by Craig Padilla and Richard Roberts
Craig Padilla - synthesizers, sequencers, samplers
Richard Roberts - wind-synth, bass flute, bansuri, tinwhistle, native American flute, field recording.

Artist: Craig Padilla & Zero Ohms
P: 2012
Imagine traveling through a solitary and vast expanse; a distant sojourn into the farthest reaches of space, searching for another planet to eventually inhabit. That is the sound and story of When The Earth Is Far Away, the third collaboration from synthesist Craig Padilla and flute master Zero Ohms. Hailing from opposite sides of a continent, the two veteran musicians have crafted a dreamlike tapestry of organic space music, showcasing a skillfully executed amalgamation of analog and digital synths, various wind instruments, field recordings and subtle electronics, that seems to suspend the perception of time.
Blended to perfection, the music on When The Earth Is Far Away has such an organic feel to it that it becomes difficult to tell where the synths end and the flutes begin. Craig Padilla explains, “I think the unique combination of electronic synthesizers and acoustic wind-instruments creates a hauntingly beautiful and dream-like aural soundscape.” Indeed, the sound sources and individual instruments disappear deep into the spacescapes, and all that remains is the music. Padilla continues, “The music creates a warm, cosmic, floating atmosphere with slow-moving organic waves of sound. It’s spacemusic with a sense of drifting on a sea of timelessness from beginning to end.”
Their unified sound is the result of a collaborative process that these two artists have developed over years of working together. Zero Ohms’ Richard Roberts explains, “The process is somewhat unique in that Craig and I both manipulated each others’ tracks instead of the usual ‘hands off the other guy’s tracks’ attitude common in most collaborations. This resulted in pieces that had a fresh sound and an innovative feel to them, performances with real heart and soul.”
The colossal expanse of deep space, the loneliness of the journey, the marvels of the cosmos; all of these things, filtered and expressed through the emotions of wonder and awe that they evoke, bring an honest purity to this album. Whether the epic journey through space that inspires this music is a possible reality or just a dream for the future, When The Earth Is Far Away pays tribute to the age-old feeling that we — the human race — as a manifest destiny, belong in the stars…to the stars.

Artist: Craig Padilla
P: 2008
Electronic excellence from the shadow of Mt. Shasta
Craig Padilla, the acclaimed electronic music veteran, is back and better than ever with Below The Mountain, a new deep-space analog synth sequencer work. Inspired by the landscape and surroundings of Mt. Shasta near his home in Northern California, Padilla masterfully guides the listener through sweeping sonic vistas of electronic soundscapes, and across a boundless rolling terrain of pulsing sequencer motifs. Below the Mountain is a textural electronic evolutionary sound journey that delivers a contemplative, ambient, deep listening music experience in the tradition of Tangerine Dream, Steve Roach, and early Klaus Schulze.
The track Windspell is dedicated to Michael Garrison.

Artist: Craig Padilla
P: 2022
Veteran electronic composer-experimenter Craig Padilla’s Discovery of Meaning is a celebration of the endless lessons brought by living in the present, and he invites the listener into the intimacy of a single instant. A personal and contemplative record, Discovery of Meaning paints in sounds from across Padilla’s career. Elements of electronica, trance, new age, drone, ambient, and cosmic space music blend into something unique and spellbinding, though Padilla’s environment is also a significant influence. He draws from modular synth explorations in Oregon, serene naturescapes at his Cottonwood, California home and the hovering anxieties of the 2020 lockdown. Padilla first began Discovery of Meaning in Oregon while working at a modular synthesizer shop and learning more about modular techniques—but completed it at his home in California in the middle of the 2020 lockdown.

Artist: Craig Padilla
P: 2004
The music of GENESIS consists of creation-inspired electronic ambiences that are woven from elements of new synthesis forms as well as vintage analog instrumentation.
The resulting music will please anyone who enjoys electronic music that is timeless and yet current, bold and yet subtle, melodic while remaining ambient. Genesis takes place inside the listener's mind and spirit. If you’re familiar with American ambient classics like Michael Stearn’s Planetary Unfolding or Kevin Braheny’s The Way Home, you'll be familiar with the general territory that Padilla explores on this CD. The tracks are all long explorations of ambient synth textures, with an emphasis on attractive, harmonious sound. The music has a bit of a classic space music feel, and the titles (Genesis, Moon Tides) seem to reflect this. The tracks on Genesis are relatively static, featuring drifting clouds of electronic sound. While the music doesn't take you from point A to point B, it encourages you to take a trip wherever your mind wanders.
The highlight of the CD is Padilla’s sumptuous electronic orchestration. The soundscapes that Padilla creates seem to envelope you, and, while the soundscapes are relatively static, new sounds and textures are continuously emerging that reward active listening.
In addition to the music, the classy packaging for the CD. It features beautiful abstract art that seems perfectly in tune with the music.
 

Artist: Craig Padilla
P: 2016
This release features beautiful electronic music with celestial sounds drifting across hypnotic syncopated patterns of organic synthesizer sounds.
Currently celebrating his fourteenth year as a prolific solo artist and collaborator on the Spotted Peccary label, Craig Padilla offers up his latest outstanding solo work, Heaven Condensed, where he presents to us a world beyond time and space.
Structured like a four-paneled work of sacred art, Heaven Condensed forges a philosophically spiritual vision of another dimension, abstracting the existence of Heaven as one might experience it either internally or externally, in four diaphanous movements that convey a wide range of organic, tangible, physical energy to amorphous, floating inspiration. Kaleidoscopic in its sequences of melody that meander through complex harmonies and atmospherics reminiscent of classic Berlin School masterpieces by Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, Heaven Condensed draws from the time-tested studio practice where analog keyboards and modular synthesizers were traditionally recorded in real-time. Padilla decidedly steers his vast array of electronic instruments in an excitingly fresh exploration of the celestial currents that hover and careen past dark abyssal depths. One doesn’t need to be familiar with Padilla’s previous works in order to find this album accessible. The metaphorical relationships he presents through the sensuous medium of electronic textures and sound spaces will feel familiar to the soul. A capacity for delight and the sublime is the only passport one needs to embark on this sonic-space journey, which is brilliantly realized and emotionally satisfying.
 

Artist: Craig Padilla & Bart Hawkins
P: 2006
The Native American Wintu world IBIIDA means I am, while LAHAA has two meanings. "Into trance" or "to doctor and heal". This spectacular journey into trance through its surreal landscapes engages viewers into an alternate state of being, with its beautiful cinematography and breathtaking kaleidoscope of waterfalls, ocean beaches, rivers, cloud formations, mountains, valleys, and lightning storms. Craig Padilla perfectly blends a mind-altering, atmospheric musical score emerging into a therapeutic and captivating visual poetry that invites repeat viewing.

IBIIDA LAHAA was shot in High Defination, producing a unique DVD immersion experience with its extraordinary clear images, time-lapse photography, and visuallization. Based on an ancient and ongoing idea that images can alter consciousness, IBIIDA LAHAA environmentally enhances one's living space while having a therapeutic effect on the human psyche.

Artist: Craig Padilla
P: 2012
Heart Of The Soul is a blend of gentle piano melodies, pulsing analog sequences and the classic synth explorations that have come to define Craig Padilla's releases over the past fifteen years..

Artist: Craig Padilla
P: 2006
A new, deep-space long-form work from the acclaimed fourteen-year veteran of electronic music! The Light in the Shadow is an electronic/space ambient evolutionary sound environment that is dense and organic in texture, and otherworldly in experience.
A single track features over sixty minutes of continuous music.
The Light In The Shadow has the floating, blissful quality of classic ambient/new age work of early Steve Roach, Michael Stearns or Kevin Braheny. The music bathes you in beautiful sounds, from washes of string-like sounds to long, tones that drift from one speaker to another.
While The Light In The Shadow is primarily a drone-based piece, it evolves significantly through its 1:03 length. At times, Padilla thins the music down to a perfume-like ambience, and at other times he builds densely layered sound collages. The piece also gradually build from a free-flowing beginning to a more rhythmic peak. Padilla adds layers of interlocking sequences that add a sense of motion, without making the music driving.

Padilla’s CD has a seductive sound, but also a depth, so that it rewards various levels of listening. For ambient and space music and Craig Padilla’s The Light In the Shadow is another great release.
 

Artist: Craig Padilla
P: 2002
Padilla's album Vostok is an excellent combination of conceptualization, performance and transformation. At 51 minutes, Vostok is a long-form piece. The meditation begins with some classic white noise. Thefilter slowly sweeps us into the piece and soon low undulating drones are introduced, adding density to the windblown soundscape. The piece fills out with layers of breathy synth pads, resonant filter motion and arcs of meandering melody. From out of this dense interplay, the beginnings of a staggered, somewhat hesitant, pattern emerges. The pulse fills out and we travel along its ever evolving progression; a forward momentum towards the space that Padilla is bringing into our dreams. The cycle of smooth flowingchords and multi-layered rhythms provide the setting, but from here on it is up to the listener to make what they will out of this free musical fantasy. Vostok is an expansive piece. The music and sounds develop at their own pace, drifting in and out of focus according to each listener's disposition. WithVostok, Craig Padilla seeks to realize music that helps us find a way to a serene center in the midst of a perplexing world.
Inspired by the mysterious depths of the hidden lake under Antarctica, Vostok is a haunting voyage into an unknown space filled with wonder and awe. Padilla masterfully crafts a subterranean soundworld, transforming electronic instruments into subtle abstract beauty that feels no less organic than inorganic, in this visionary long-form ambient work. Vostok is a place of purity and stillness, of undisturbed existence.

Artist: Craig Padilla, Zero Ohms & Skip Murphy
P: 2009
Continuing the astral journey they began with Path of Least Resistance, Craig Padilla, Richard Roberts (a.k.a Zero Ohms), and fellow traveler Skip Murphy have created a release that is an excellent fusion of New Age heart with Electronic Spacemusic sensibilities. Although it would seem an unlikely combination for a multi-flutist to join forces with two retro-analog synth masters, the results are suprisingly fresh and skillfully executed, and as one reviewer put it, “Roberts, Padilla and Murphy show they are a trio to be reckoned with as astral musical explorers.” According to Roberts, the new release is a more yin-inclined expolration of an inner space as opposed to the yang-oriented excursion through outer space presented on the earlier Path of Least Resistance. "The Portal represents our own limitations,” states Roberts, “and so to go beyond the portal is to become more than we believe we are." This indeed becomes a fitting metaphor for the project itself. Artists from different ends of the musical spectrum coming together to create something beyond what would be possible as individuals. Throughout the album, Padilla and Murphy at times craft etherial and elegant soundscapes around Robert’s fluid and purposeful flute explorations. At other times slightly more active electronics gently propel the music from one space to the next, carrying listeners through the vast spiral beyond and into the realm of the spirit with music that is simultaneously intimate and interstellar, organic and otherworldly.

Artist: Paul Ellis & Craig Padilla
P: 2004
Two electronic artists from the western US, Craig Padilla and Paul Ellis, join forces to create 72 minutes of enjoyable electronic music. ECHO SYSTEM is clearly inspired by the classic 70's electronic synth masters (Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, etc.) However, rather than simply imitating the pioneers, Padilla and Ellis draw inspitration from them, infusing their own distinct styles, and adding depth and interest to an all too often two-dimensional musical form. Craig and Paul spent two years fine-tuning ECHO SYSTEM, and it is sure to appeal to long time fans of electronic music. Definitely a must for fans of Padilla or Ellis' previous works, and a great introduction to those discovering either of them for the first time.