Providence Sound Session: Now through July 12

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Providence Sound Session will be taking the Renaissance City by storm now through Saturday July 12^th. If you’ve never caught it, Sound Session is a “genre-defying” music, arts and culture festival boasting a lineup of international artists and featuring every kind of music you can possibly imagine, as well as spoken word and dance performances. The Providence Black Repertory Company has been producing this fantastic festival with the city’s Department of Art, Culture, and Tourism for the past several years. Performances will be happening all over the city throughout the week, culminating in Saturday, July 12^th’s enormous block party in downtown Providence with a fashion show at 8PM and a Carnival Parade starting at Waterplace Park at 10PM. This is one of the highlights of Providence’s summer season and I promise that you will be kicking yourself later if you miss it.

For a full schedule, including performer listings and participating venues, go to www.providencesoundsession.com

SweatLodge: A New England Rage

Sometimes, after a long, stress-filled week, you just need to go somewhere dark and cave-like, order a strong drink, and listen to some live, unrefined aggression, preferably while standing close enough to the amps that you can feel the bass vibrate in your sternum.

When those moments strike, you will be lucky if SweatLodge happens to be playing the Living Room, or an illegal basement show near you. Consisting of Jonathan Wisehart on vocals and guitar, Eric J Grieshaber (also of the Chine Stars) on drums, and Mike Grigelevich on the bass, SweatLodge brings a raw, stripped-down, oddly hypnotic sound to the Providence music scene. The band was formed in 2005 when Jonathan and Eric met working at downtown bar and restaurant the Red Fez, and they’ve been bringing their brand of driving, feedback-filled “post punk” to clubs, basements, and loft spaces in and around the Ocean State ever since. Mike joined them after his previous band, Hulk-Out, toured with them in the summer 0f 2007.

Their sound is unapologetically cacophonic and violent. SweatLodge is not for everyone, and they don’t try to be. The music focuses on establishing a mood rife with frustration and anger. Jonathan, who writes the majority of the songs, admits, “I got a lot of rage.” Mike and Eric have a palpable chemistry as they create solid, winding rhythms, some of which sound strangely Middle Eastern. Jonathan layers long, held chords and notes, crunchy riffs, and consciously utilized feedback over them. He doesn’t sing so much as rant and scream. Songs like “Easterland” and “Useless Hinge” start off moody and understated, building to a purgative climax as steady and compelling as a heartbeat.

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Ebu Gogo: Exploring the Imaginary Worlds

“We all have undiagnosed ADD.”

Photo by Ara Ghajanian

So says Justin Abene, bassist for Ebu Gogo. It’s almost midnight on Sunday, May 18^th, and the band has just finished playing a set at Club Hell. I am interviewing them, or trying to. It’s a bit like herding cats.

If you’ve heard Ebu Gogo, you probably aren’t surprised by Justin’s observation. For the past two years, this Providence-based band has been making instrumental, hyper-frantic tunes influenced by the music of the band members’ childhood: eight-bit video game themes and the soundtracks to eighties action-adventure-sci-fi movies. The resulting sound is an impressive collection of high-energy, infectious songs that the band crafted as an aural accompaniment to imagined scenes and stories that developed while they were writing the music. Like the film soundtracks that inspire them, Ebu Gogo’s songs convey action and emotion in a direct, inherently recognizable musical short-hand. It’s a fun, bizarre, and (despite the band’s protestations) utterly original sound, as their nomination for “Best Genre-Defying Act” in this year’s Providence Phoenix music poll reflects.
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Mustang Cobra: Ambassadors of Metal

Where were you when you first heard metal?

 

For me, it was the living room of a babysitter’s house in 1989, watching Metallica’s first video, “One,” on MTV. It gave me nightmares. At the age of eight, I was not yet ready to appreciate what I’d seen and heard. It was too intense, too raw, and too graphic for my unformed, sheltered perceptions. My parents were pacifistic hippies and I had never in my life been exposed to something so unabashedly aggressive (and consequently, they never hired that babysitter again).

Almost twenty years later, sitting on one of the speakers that line the front of the stage at the Living Room, I drink in a forty-five minute set by Mustang Cobra, and I appreciate it fully.
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These are the people in your neighborhood…

Mark Anderson fled New Orleans after Katrina and has been making Providence his home. You might have seen him at a local fund raiser or at Gracie’s restaurant where he plays every Thursday night. Mark’s an incredibly talented classically trained jazz guitarist with the business sense to match–not always a common thing among musicians. Besides his Manderson Jazz Trio, he also plays in an electric band called JunkRabbit and an 80’s band called Split Infinity. He even plays bass for the legendary Rhode Island musician, Kim Trusty.

This interview and the links above might give you an introduction, but the only way to really know Mark is to hear his music. Go see him perform live; he’s everywhere.

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