Spin Marvel: Infolding

Spin Marvel is all about shaping sounds. Ambient landscapes, minimalistic tides, atmospherics, trance-inducing passages, and electro-acoustic marriages are all part of the package when this group gets going.

When drummer Martin France put Spin Marvel together and orchestrated the creation of its eponymous debut, the band was presented as a quartet with trippy musical aspirations and the skills to pull off whatever it wanted. On the band's follow-up—Spin Marvel 2: The Reluctantly Politicised Mr. James (Edition Recrods, 2010)—France expanded the line-up, adding Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer to the mix while retaining the services of guitarist John Parricelli, bassist Tim Harries, and drummer/percussionist/keyboardist/sound-audio editor Terje Evensen. On this, the band's third release, there's another slight shift in roles and personnel: Parricelli is out of the picture, Emre Ramazanoglu drums on a single track ("Minus Two"), and Evensen deals solely in live electronics.

Those aforementioned changes ultimately alter the sound of the band, bringing different colors and textures into the presentation(s) on each album, but the overall effect of the group's music remains the same: Spin Marvel presents moody and mind-bending soundscapes that are at once calm and tumultuous, heavy and weightless, and dynamic and stagnant. "Same Hand Swiss Double Pug," for example, features a dark, icy, and isolated introduction, cautious and patient turns and glances from Molvaer, a France-and-Harries slow groove, and a rambunctious second half. It may sound like a lot to flesh out over the course of a single piece, but the progression is well-paced over the number's sixteen-plus minute lifespan.

Throughout Infolding, Spin Marvel makes an art out of blending nuance and noise, toying with density, and painting with a broad palette of colors, both organic and unearthly in nature.