Craig Padilla + Marvin Allen - Toward the Horizon

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: 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
P: 2025
Nothing goes over dreamy atmospheres and pulsating sequences like some great guitar work and maybe some drums! His “Solina” recording a year ago rocked Chuck’s world with its overall sound, depth and integrity and so Mike went after him for a release and the OS “ The Pulse of Life” was born. Consisting of 5 tracks of hand and ear played modular sequencer music performed on the Mattson Modular synthesizer, this is the sound of the past mixed with the shadows of the new, all wrapped in analog goodness.