Craig Padilla and Marvin Allen Trip to the Stars with Unfolding Skies
by John Diliberto 3/29/2026
I love an album that takes you back while moving forward. That’s the feeling I get from all four releases by Craig Padilla and Marvin Allen, but especially their latest, Unfolding Skies. I can hear so many influences: Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, Steve Hackett, Blackouts-era Ashra, Van Halen, and more. But they distill these influences into their own post-cosmic brew, a meeting of psychedelic moods with inventive synthesizer arrangements and tastefully pyrotechnic guitar. It’s post-rock space music for the 21st century.
Since the turn of the millennium, Craig Padilla has been a prolific composer of electronic music, with well north of 60 releases. They span sequencer space music, drone zone, and more impressionistic electronic painting, especially through collaborations with the late flute player, Zero Ohms, a.k.a. Richard Roberts. Marvin Allen is less known and not prolific at all. His four recordings to date are all his collaborations with Craig Padilla. They’ve been exploring their intimate musical relationship for the last seven years with Toward the Horizon in 2019, Strange Gravity in 2021, Weathering the Storm in 2023, and now, Unfolding Skies.
The duo often like to unfold their sound over long tracks, but instead of locking into a single sequencer groove for 18 minutes, they move through dramatic progressions over time. The opening “Frameworks” is a scene-setter, with an ambient opening that sounds like a walk through technological forest, with metal leaves rustling on the ground as you move through the forest with electric guitar buzzing in your ear. A simple piano motif and feedback electric guitar slowly take you in until a sudden shift of energy occurs, like birds bursting from a tree. Psychedelic feedback guitar rides sequencers and electronic percussion until another rhythm shift occurs with a space-warp bass drop adapted from EDM.
There is an element of controlled composition and pure improvisation on Unfolding Skies. You can imagine them working this out in their Pacific Northwest studios, spinning freewheeling guitar improvisations against morphing electronic landscapes.
Padilla isn’t a computer jockey. He can play keyboards as well as program and that kind of soloing sets him apart from a lot of music in the genre, reminding me a bit of one of his early mentors the late electronic artist, Michael Garrison. But Padilla is less four-on-the-floor anthemic and more polyrhythmic grooves and celestial ambiences. On “Undercurrents of Change,” Padilla creates a merging of sequencer and melody in intersecting lines. Allen’s guitar is straightforward at first until he launches into a heroic solo.
“Sun Portal” opens in serenity on synth pads, a time-stepping bass line, and Allen’s reverbed guitar accents before he slides into a roller coaster of looping phrases that ascend into a churning rhythm of drums, Padilla joining in with a spiraling synth solo. It’s a progressive rock influence that goes even further on “Architects of Time,” which climaxes with a synth-god solo, albeit more melodic than pyrotechnic.
“Jammin’ with Buddha” has a title that might make you think it’s a Phish track, but it’s actually the most pastoral performance on the album. “Cosmic Blueprint” starts out a lot like “Jammin’ with Buddha” but heads into deeper space, a slow drift of amorphous washes and plaintive guitar, like moving downstream and picking up sonic detritus along the way. Because tomorrow never knows.
The title track closes the album as the longest piece at 13 minutes and change. It’s something of a magnum opus that is consistently evolving, opening on analog synth boops (no bleeps) in a herky-jerky pattern that’s subsumed in bass note slides and a deep undercurrent. Allen’s sustained guitar is snarling and prowling until a minimalist, interlocked sequencer pattern takes over. But then, just as suddenly – though smoothly – shifts into a more aggressive pattern. Allen’s guitar comes in from the far distance in the mix to the foreground. The skies clearly unfold and launch you into space. But it does come back to earth in a drifting pastoral mode, like the end of a lysergic trip replete with mellotronesque flutes.
Craig Padilla has enjoyed a long career but has really come into his own on in this collaboration as well as his final album with Zero Ohms. His enveloping sequencer architecture and varied tonal palette set him in his own light. It is a perfect setting for Marvin Allen’s acid-infused, prog-rock-inspired soloing. He is as gifted at fret-burning as he is at tonal painting.
There is a unifying sense to the quartet of albums that Padilla and Allen have released, beginning with Daniel Pipitone’s covers which all feature an “umbrella girl” in different settings. This time she is floating against white clouds on a blue sky. It is peaceful, but don’t be fooled. There is also some turbulence here. Unfolding Skies will surprise you even while you are enmeshed in its sonic beauty.