Machines With Magnets

Welcoming art/performance space, good bar/strong drinks, inexpensive shows, lots of parking. It's an easy calculation, find a show and go.

We had our senior show here. Parking isn't great, the bathrooms had no soap, and there is no circulation of air. Of course, I might be sort of biased since the show the year before was at The Narrows in Fall River which was much more suitable for the size of show we had (30+ people showing senior projects, with all their families, etc. aka it was extremely crowded), but overall I wasn't too impressed with the gallery itself.

Together with Kafe Lila, Machines With Magnets is forcing me to reconsider the city of Pawtucket, which I had previously thought of as "the place where Slater Mill and the DMV are." Currently I think of Pawtucket as "the place where Slater Mill and the DMV and Kafe Lila and Machines With Magnets are," but if I spend enough time at KL and MWM, my view will undoubtedly become more nuanced.

Machines With Magnets is a recording studio, art gallery, and performance space that has fast become my favorite music venue and possibly one of my favorite places in Rhode Island. The inside is beautiful, with two large rooms decked out in cool white paint and beautiful hardwood flooring (one floor is stenciled with an absolutely stunning pattern). Art of varied quality adorns the walls.

I have now had the pleasure of attending two shows here--an electronic music performance and Quintron + Miss Pussycat--and I enjoyed them both. Watching bands perform with art as a backdrop is a pleasure. The sound is good and the venue is run fairly efficiently. At the latter show, they quickly cycled through four bands by alternating the rooms in which each band performed. Very smart. The crowds are fun and interesting. Drinks, Dunkin' Donuts coffee, and even pizza are sold for reasonable prices.

During my first visit, a friend turned to me and said, "I wish I lived here." "I wish I could DJ here," I replied. Until either of these things happens, I'll be stopping in periodically for more music and art. You should, too.