Music Ex Machina

From a mix of folk and electronic music was born the Swedish band Wintergatan. Formed in 2013, the band is comprised of four members, Evelina Hägglund, Martin Molin, Marcus Sjöberg, and David Zandén. They produced a number of singles that same year, and two more in 2014 and 2016. In English-speaking countries, they are known for a YouTube video that went viral in 2016, Marble Machine. The video shows a contraption the band built that plays music by dropping metal marbles onto instruments including a vibraphone, bass guitar, and drum-like discs. The marbles are brought up to the top of the machine by a hand-cranked system of gears, pulleys, and legos. The sound created is rather lovely and resonant, but what is interesting about the video is how they use every part of the machine in the music. The chugging sound of the gears is a constant, time-keeping pulse in the background, and the snap of levers being flipped creates sharper, accented sounds. Wintergatan also considered the visual element of the performance, filming the machine from different angles to show how each sound is created. The marbles falling onto the vibraphone are especially enchanting to listen to- perhaps the closest sound to an instrument made of rain.