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Established in 2006, Machines with Magnets hosts experimental music performances, sound and art exhibitions and installations, performance art, film and video screenings, cultural and community events, private events, and fundraisers. Past performances include The Body, Dan Deacon, Mirah, Etran de l'Aïr, Braveyoung, Lydia Lunch, Lightning Bolt, Brown Bird, Container, and Mdou Moctar.
Upcoming Events + Tickets
All ages unless otherwise noted, 21+ with valid ID to drink
Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board Opening Reception
Thursday, April 30, 2026
6:00 pm
to
9:00 pm
“Light as a Feather ,Stiff as a Board” asks whether you are the invisible onlooker or an active participant. Eli Kaufman and Michael Gunn harness painting’s voyeuristic nature to complicate interpersonal relationships. The paintings exist at a threshold where our internal world is acted upon, through collaboration and intimacy. Tangled foliage, Twisting cables, A cast shadow—Reach, hold, repair, tend. How do we balance relying on one another while channeling the power of that which goes unseen? This exhibition shares its title with a game played by children at slumber parties. A levitation trick that evokes the unknown, a tension with the truth of its physics.The events that unfold are recalled, heightened and eventually brought back down to earth. The disillusion of our accounts is a natural conclusion. Through melodramatic lighting and intangible ghostly presence, tension between physicality and spirituality charges moments with desire—an attempt towards harmony.
Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board Opening Reception
Special Event
Thursday, April 30, 2026
6:00 pm
9:00 pm
“Light as a Feather ,Stiff as a Board” asks whether you are the invisible onlooker or an active participant. Eli Kaufman and Michael Gunn harness painting’s voyeuristic nature to complicate interpersonal relationships. The paintings exist at a threshold where our internal world is acted upon, through collaboration and intimacy. Tangled foliage, Twisting cables, A cast shadow—Reach, hold, repair, tend. How do we balance relying on one another while channeling the power of that which goes unseen? This exhibition shares its title with a game played by children at slumber parties. A levitation trick that evokes the unknown, a tension with the truth of its physics.The events that unfold are recalled, heightened and eventually brought back down to earth. The disillusion of our accounts is a natural conclusion. Through melodramatic lighting and intangible ghostly presence, tension between physicality and spirituality charges moments with desire—an attempt towards harmony.
Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board Closing Reception
Thursday, June 25, 2026
6:00 pm
to
9:00 pm
“Light as a Feather ,Stiff as a Board” asks whether you are the invisible onlooker or an active participant. Eli Kaufman and Michael Gunn harness painting’s voyeuristic nature to complicate interpersonal relationships. The paintings exist at a threshold where our internal world is acted upon, through collaboration and intimacy. Tangled foliage, Twisting cables, A cast shadow—Reach, hold, repair, tend. How do we balance relying on one another while channeling the power of that which goes unseen? This exhibition shares its title with a game played by children at slumber parties. A levitation trick that evokes the unknown, a tension with the truth of its physics.The events that unfold are recalled, heightened and eventually brought back down to earth. The disillusion of our accounts is a natural conclusion. Through melodramatic lighting and intangible ghostly presence, tension between physicality and spirituality charges moments with desire—an attempt towards harmony.
Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board Closing Reception
Special Event
Thursday, June 25, 2026
6:00 pm
9:00 pm
“Light as a Feather ,Stiff as a Board” asks whether you are the invisible onlooker or an active participant. Eli Kaufman and Michael Gunn harness painting’s voyeuristic nature to complicate interpersonal relationships. The paintings exist at a threshold where our internal world is acted upon, through collaboration and intimacy. Tangled foliage, Twisting cables, A cast shadow—Reach, hold, repair, tend. How do we balance relying on one another while channeling the power of that which goes unseen? This exhibition shares its title with a game played by children at slumber parties. A levitation trick that evokes the unknown, a tension with the truth of its physics.The events that unfold are recalled, heightened and eventually brought back down to earth. The disillusion of our accounts is a natural conclusion. Through melodramatic lighting and intangible ghostly presence, tension between physicality and spirituality charges moments with desire—an attempt towards harmony.
Coming in for landing:
//// Cloud Becomes Your Hand
Coming in from Brooklyn, psych-rock quintet Cloud Becomes Your Hand's magical sound will take you safely over the crests of the sea's most impressive swells. //// Minibeast
Minibeast is the musical creation of Peter Prescott (Mission Of Burma, Volcano Suns, Kustomized, Peer Group). Minibeast combines surf, psych, punk, easy listening, 60's children's music, and soundtrack influences to create instrumental soundscapes. Providence homies:
//// OMNIVORE Providence's own Glenna Van Nostrand eats all. Riding a border between experimental electronic music and vocal performance, Omivore has been known to repurpose corded phones and electronic bits to piece together an ethereal and overwhelming sound. //// HOST
Recent Providence transplant from Savannah, GA, Host, (Alex Maddalena) creates melodic, repeating compositions that build tick, wet astmospheres using a guitar and table of electronics.
The Quahogs . Tapestries . Pyramid . Ian O'neil and Dennis Ryan
October 24, 2015
8:00 pm
Tour Come Back Show!! The Quahogs, Tapestries, Pyramid, &
Ian O'neil and Dennis Ryan (of Deer Tick). We wish Rafay Rashid continued superhuman strength in his beastly recovery.
CTRL+ALT+REPEAT is an experimental music series that was founded in 2004 by Mark + Laura Cetilia out of an interest in exploring the intersections of electronic music, improvisation, contemporary classical music, and sound art.
KONUS QUARTETT:
As a chamber music ensemble whose instrumentation changes frequently, the Konus Quartet engages its audience with highly expressive and idiosyncratic sounds. Contemporary original compositions are interpreted predominantly by the quartet, but these are also contrasted with pieces from past centuries and arrangements for saxophone instrumentation. TOMAS KORBER:
Born in 1979 in Zurich, Swiss-Spanish composer/improviser Tomas Korber has written numerous compositions and played improvised music since the early 90’s. He has worked solo and collaboratively. and composes music for theater- and film-productions.
An evening of cybernetic constitution. Touring Creatures:
X Tiger Hatchery X welcome to the feline aviary. Free-rage-jazz birthing beasts. Accompanied by Mr Paul Flaherty.
X Joey Molinaro X Bow wielding, note shaker. This guy really tears. with Local Behemoths:
X Black Pus X ooozing, dripping, rattling, vibrational heartquake machine.
X Timeghost X android protoplasm brewing wave motion interference. signature socket grid. bulb shock.
X ...Shambling mound... X A mass of tangled vines and dripping slime rises on two trunk-like legs, reeking of rot and freshly turned earth.
Come to mankind's final frontier, Pawtucket! Where we will playing choice episodes of one of the most recognizable sci-fi franchises of all time...STAR TREK! Enjoy some special star trek cocktails, such as bloodwine, and sit back and get ready to go boldly, where no one has gone before!!!
There will be cake. There will be great music. There will be much fun. Please come and enjoy this evening with us. It will be a beautiful birthday memory for Courtney. Also, this will be an awesome chance for you to meet a fantastic musician from New Zealand, and to support local/regional music. Please PM Courtney, Mali, Emily, or Katie if you need further justifications for attending this shindig. Doors @ 7:30
Show @ 8:00 SHARP (Don't be late!) // All Ages Westeryear - Beautiful layers and harmonies of tender music that feel a warm hug. April Fish - Mysterious voices-in-your-head-esque 'proto-punk' from New Zealand. Courtney Swain - Dreamy and sorta progressive singer-songwriter sounds. Jaggery - Haunting and somewhat demented chamber-pop from Boston MA.
MIKE COYKENDALL // Currently most well known for his duties as a sideman, producer, and recordist via his work with M Ward, Blitzen Trapper, She & Him, Annalisa Tornfelt, & Tin Hat Trio, Coykendall has been making his own unique outsider records since the mid '80s. BEN MASON // A songwriter from Melbourne, Ben Mason's psych-pop band, the Smallgoods released three critically acclaimed albums between 2003-2007.
DEATH VESSEL // That Joel Thibodeau’s slender, winsome voice is at once so comforting and so unsettling might be the greatest of his many strengths. Reed-thin but sturdy, youthful but somehow ageless, its deep benevolence is also slightly eerie.
FIELD DRUMS // Taking a cue from their mutual love of great pop hooks and harmonies, Field Drums is a playground for Rachel and Jeffrey to embrace and play around with their pop and other musical leanings, incorporating drums, guitar, and two voices.
Rafael Toral plays electronic music today as a jazz musician would play his instrument, applying jazz discipline and working practices to his abstract electronics. The result is truly evolutionary music, once described as "a brand of electronic music far more visceral and emotive than that of his cerebral peers". Melodic without notes, rhythmic without a beat, familiar but strange, meticulous but radically free, it is riddled with interesting paradox. Toral has developed a musical system to physically play experimental electronic instruments and puts it to practice with large-scale project Space Program — a complex network of recordings and performances to deliver music that is full of clarity and space, articulating silence and sound in a thoughtful, yet physical way.
Magic Lantern Cinema Presents FLICKER, PULSE: An Evening with Bruce McClure & Alexander Dupuis, curated by Seth Watter. The art of Bruce McClure is sometimes called, with a nod to the sixties, “expanded cinema.” A more apt expression might in fact be “reduced cinema,” or cinema stripped to its most elementary components: light, sound, a room full of bodies. McClure himself calls it “projector performance,” a phrase that highlights the aspect of live enactment and improvisation that is so integral to all his efforts. McClure creates “a remystification of cinema… meant to elicit astonishment and wonder, but calibrated for a twenty-first-century audience attuned to the aesthetics of noise and distortion” (Ed Halter, Artforum).
Saturday 09.12.15 / 6pm–1am / $5 before 8pm / $8 after.
Epic release party. 42 one-of-a-kind lathe cut 7"s & 2 CD set available in letterpress-printed, hand-numbered editions (200 sets of CDs, only one copy of each lathe will be sold). Performances by:
BLEVIN BLECTUM & ED OSBORN • JEFF CAREY • MORGAN EVANS-WEILER • SARAH HENNIES • SHAWN GREENLEE • JEREMY HARRIS • DONNA PARKER & VIC RAWLINGS • ANDREA PENSADO • SOFT TARGET • TIMEGHOST • MATT UNDERWOOD • WORK/DEATH + live realizations of JOHN CAGE’S IMAGINARY LANDSCAPE NO. 5 between acts.
Dan Friel: Serpentine, melodic clamor oozing from accelerated sequences. Thrill Jockey Records Voyager. Wilted Woman: Returning to RI from a satellite over Berlin, industrial technician and electron daredevil, transmitting on Primitive Languages, Wicked City, MORE records. Davey Harms: From something about bits of burger and a bicycle, yea the Mincemeat or Tenspeed dude. Lexical originator of Fake Techno. Unicorn Hard-On: Hardwired Korg abuse. Sopping, drippy, hyperdimensional game of life techno. V A L E R I E.
PETER SELIGMAN. (NYC) / distorted layers of computer noise smeared over psychotic, seizure inducing rhythm. MYSTERIOUS HOUSE. (NYC) / disorienting software noise blizzard. ex- jamesamoeba. BASTIAN VOID. (Worcester, MA) / glistening modular synthesis by Joe Bastardo. Moss Archive label head. HNTR HNTR. (PVD) / a rare outing by the one and only Curtis! soothing but occasionally violent, computer-based electronics. TIME BASE CORRECTOR. (PVD) / "pre-music consciousness" by electronic psycho popper Matt Underwood. always strange.
Emily Shaw of The Sugar Honey Iced Tea and Penn Sultan of Last Good Tooth will be kicking off the night with a killer duet set. The Lentils: The Lentils' last show in RI before they leave us for the sunny shores of California!! Happy Jawbone is dead! Long live The Lentils! The Lentils always give it 100%. The Lentils are good for you. Where would you be without The Lentils? Louie Louie: All female garage pop band. Slight-Psych, Rock and freaking ROLL am I Right?!? Pyramid: "_____" - Dirty punk from pvd. Grape Room. The Lentils are actually transformers. You'll see.
