Martin_Molin

Martin Molin

Martin Molin

Swedish composer, musician and engineer

Martin Molin (born January 24, 1983) is a Swedish composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, inventor and constructor.[2][3] He is a member of the folktronica and post-rock band Wintergatan, and previously a member of Detektivbyrån.[4] He grew up at Kronoparken in Karlstad, Sweden.[5] From 2017 he lived and worked in southern France, where he built a custom music studio and workshop, but in April 2022 he moved back to Sweden.[6]

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Education and early career

Molin studied music at the Musikmakarna (Songwriters Academy) in Örnsköldsvik.[4] In 2005, he and his brother Anders Molin were inspired to start Detektivbyrån, after he heard La Valse d'Amélie by Yann Tiersen.[7] The group disbanded in 2010.[8]

Wintergatan

In 2011 Molin, Evelina Hägglund, Marcus Sjöberg and David Zandén created the band Wintergatan.[4] The group gained attention when, inspired by a visit to the Speelklok Museum, Molin built his "Marble Machine", a music box made of 3000 components that played using 2000 metal balls.[4][9][10] After working on the machine for over 14 months,[11] he released a music video featuring the Marble Machine in 2016, which as of October 2022 has over 218 million views on YouTube.[12] He then started work on the "Marble Machine X", or "MMX", a more robust redesign of the machine with the aim of recording an album with it and taking it on a world tour.[13]

Molin documented the construction process of the "MMX" on the band's YouTube channel.[14] This at one point was called "Wintergatan Wednesdays" but lost the title when Molin experimented with new formats and release schedules. In January 2021, Molin started a new YouTube channel called "Wintergatan 2" with videos in the style of daily vlogs (as opposed to the intermittent videos on "Wintergatan") documenting the ongoing Marble Machine X build project in greater detail. A month later, Molin largely rolled the "Wintergatan 2" content back into the main Wintergatan channel.[15]

In 2017, he presented a series Music Machine Mondays about the exhibits in the Dutch Speelklok Museum.[16] In 2020 he planned to present a similar series about the collection of Siegfrieds Mechanisches Musikkabinett (Siegfried's Mechanical Music Cabinet) in Germany.[17] This was, however, halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As of May 2021, the series still has not recommenced.

Molin eventually abandoned the MMX project, and on March 2, 2022, started a new designing process of a new Marble Machine 3, livestreaming whole CAD process on his Youtube channel. The comments to his YouTube posts at this time document widespread concern about both abandoning the MMX and the direction Molin was taking, including doubts that a finished marble machine would ever be delivered.

In April 23, 2022, he announced that he is moving back from Lorgues (France) to Sweden for personal reasons.[18]

References

  1. [1]
    "About Wintergatan". YouTube.
  2. [2]
    "Martin Molin tells all on his Marble Machine". Makery. Retrieved 2020-02-04.
  3. [3]
    "#004 Martin Molin: The Guy Who Created the Wintergatan Marble Machine from Live2cre8". www.stitcher.com. Retrieved 2020-02-04.
  4. [4]
    "In the studio: Martin Molin". Stim.se. Retrieved 2020-02-04.
  5. [5]
    Radio, Sveriges (26 April 2016). "Martin Molin: Kändes fruktansvärt att lägga ner Detektivbyrån - Kronologen från Musikguiden i P3". sverigesradio.se (in Swedish). Retrieved 2020-01-29.
  6. [6]
    "I Moved to France! - Marble Machine X #18". YouTube.
  7. [7]
    "Tunefully Yours". DAMN° Magazine. 2016-05-03. Retrieved 2020-02-04.
  8. [8]
    "DETEKTIVBYRÅN". Progarchives.com. Retrieved 2020-02-04.
  9. [9]
    Hawkins, Andrew J. (2016-03-02). "Watch 2,000 marbles come together to make beautiful music". The Verge. Retrieved 2020-03-06.
  10. [10]
    "Be Amazed By This Marvelous Music Machine, Powered By 2,000 Marbles". NPR.org. Retrieved 2020-03-06.
  11. [11]
    Woollaston, Victoria (2017-03-16). "16 months to build, two hours to demolish: watch the Marble Machine being taken apart". Wired UK. ISSN 1357-0978. Retrieved 2020-03-06.
  12. [12]
    "Wintergatan - Marble Machine (music instrument using 2000 marbles)". YouTube. Retrieved 2020-08-26.
  13. [13]
    "Wintergatan Declares the Conveyor Belt Complete on its Epic Marble Machine X". Colossal. 2019-04-30. Retrieved 2020-02-04.
  14. [14]
    "Wintergatan Wednesdays". YouTube. Retrieved 2020-02-04.
  15. [15]
    Which Marble Track Is Best?, retrieved 2021-03-07
  16. [16]
    "Music Machine Mondays". YouTube. Retrieved 2020-02-04.
  17. [17]
    "Self-Playing Banjo?! - Marble Machine X Inspiration". YouTube. Retrieved 2020-02-19.
  18. [18]
    "Disassembling The Marble Machine X". YouTube.
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