To offer a brief background: Wintergatan is the new project from Swedish electronica/folk musician Martin “MacGyver” Molin, who previously played the glockenspeil, traktofon, and theremin for the experimental music collective Detektivbyrån. Molin likely earned his nickname for his ability to tinker and to invent. Even if that isn’t how he got hs nickname, he has indeed lived up to his namesake with the invention of The Marble Machine, a hald-powered, mostly wood musical instrument that uses 2000 falling marbles to make music.
Molin recently completed the machine, learned how to play it, and published the following video online. The result is nothing less than astonishing. Perhaps taking visual cues from the 2001 Animusic video Pipe Dream, Molin created an instrument that carefully releases marbles onto drums and onto electric guitar strings to create, essentially, a one-man band. The Marble Machine doesn’t have an exotic name (like, say, the majestic bellowphone or the daxophone), but it’s a complete orchestra unto itself.
Wintergatan began constructing the machine in late 2014, and there are several making-of videos on his YouTube channel.
Wintergatan is not the only person to have made a marble machine. According to comments he gave to Wired UK, there is an entire subculture of marble machine makers who construct elaborate musical instruments like this. Wintergatan’s is different than most, however, as it’s programmable. Many marble machines are merely random. Wintergatan intends to build sleeker machines in the future and bring them on tour. The current machine is incredible, but it is difficult to transport.
Let’s watch.
Photo: Wired UK
Witney Seibold is a contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and the co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. He also contributes to Legion of Leia and to Blumhouse. You can follow him on “The Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
