Wintergatan | |
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_cropped.jpg) Wintergatan atHaldern Pop Festival 16 | |
| Background information | |
| Origin | Gothenburg, Sweden |
| Genres | Folktronica,experimental pop[1]post-rock[2] |
| Years active | 2012–present |
| Members |
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| Website | wintergatan |
Wintergatan (Swedish pronunciation:[ˈvɪ̂nːtɛrˌɡɑːtan], "theMilky Way",lit. '"the Winter Street"') is a Swedishfolktronica band fromGothenburg. Two of their members—Martin Molin and Marcus Sjöberg—were previously part of the former bandDetektivbyrån.
The band released their first track in late 2012, titledSommarfågel, and released their debut albumWintergatan in 2013.[3] The band toured with the album around Sweden in 2014 and 2016; Julia Jonas substituted for Evelina Hägglund during some 2014 performances.[4][5]
Wintergatan is made up of four musicians, Martin Molin, Evelina Hägglund, David Zandén and Marcus Sjöberg.
The band's members all play various instruments, but have primary specializations. Martin Molin specializes in thevibraphone as well as the electronic instruments that define Wintergatan's sound, Evelina Hägglund specializes in keyboard instruments, David Zandén specializes inbass, and Marcus Sjöberg specializes indrums.[6]
The band uses a variety of unconventional instruments including the Modulin, aribbon controlled synthesizer built fromDoepfereurorack modules in the likeness of aviolin,[7] theMoog Theremini digitaltheremin, an electricautoharp, ahammered dulcimer,a self-built punch-card music box, a slide projector, amusical saw, and a typewriter for use as percussion.
Between December 2014 and March 2016, the band uploaded severalYouTube videos featuring Martin Molin documenting the construction of amusic box that usesmarbles to play instruments. The machine is powered by a hand-crank, and works by raising steel marbles through the machine into multiple feeder tubes, where they are then released from height via programmable release gates, each marble falling and striking a musical instrument below. Instruments played by marbles striking them include avibraphone,bass guitar,cymbal, an emulatedkick drum,high hat andsnare drum sounds usingcontact microphones. The music score is stored on two programmable wheels that utilizeLego Technic beams and stud connectors to trigger armatures to release the marbles. A finalmusic video showing the machine in use was released in 2016, and has been viewed over 240 million times.[8][9][10][11]
Ten months after the debut of the original Marble Machine, the band announced their plans to make a new marble machine for the purpose of touring. The new machine, to be called "Marble Machine X", would solve a multitude of mechanical functionality problems with the original Marble Machine. Martin Molin, the builder of the original Marble Machine, collaborated with a team of engineers and designers as well as fans for the design and build of the Marble Machine X. The original Marble Machine came back into his possession after being exhibited inMuseum Speelklok inUtrecht,the Netherlands.[12][13][14][15][16] Martin Molin stopped building the MMX at the end of 2021 after realizing the design would not be robust or reliable enough to go on tour with. The first two machines have been donated to a museum for mechanical music machines in Germany called "Siegfried's Mechanical Music Cabinet" and in March 2022 he started to design a third version, with the series name being called Martin vs the Machine.[17]
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