Artist description Upright Bass, Acoustic drums, drum loops, old analog synths, electronic guitars, spoken word samples, and a very bitter comic for a frontman

Music Style Trend Free

Musical Influences new wave, hip-hop, ecclectic, spoken word

Similar Artists Soul Coughing, Talking Heads, Charles Bukowski

Artist History Formed in 1998 in Providence RI, Fat Buddah's music comes from a complete misunderstanding of their instruments of what is ever trendy. Thus thye name trend free. Not that we didn't want to be trendy, on the contrary-we tried very had and failed miserably. What is left is a strange brew of sounds and styles, and the occaisional accident.

Group Members Buddah Ryebread Smit

Instruments electric guitars, sitars, acoustic guitars, dobro, analog and digital synts, acoustic and electronic drums, upright bass, electric bass, samples, drum machine, vocals

Albums Ohm

Press Reviews On for the record The Complaints and Fat Buddah finally get it all on tape by Bob Gulla It takes time to nurture a band, to develop a songwriting style, to envision a creative aesthetic. It takes money to get studio time, record some songs, and press a CD. And it takes guts to put it all out there for the (figurative) world to hear. A couple of local bands, the Complaints from Cranston and Fat Buddah from Providence, have finally seen their stars align and have managed to write, record, and release their debut discs. If you've ever done it before, you know it's no walk in the park. And that's why both bands will be celebrating the occasion with an earth-shaking show and star-studded party. Fat Buddah: Ohm (Self-released CD; Modulation Cosmonaut Publishing) Joe Bartone's a musician, which means that he has to have a real job to make a living. Bartone's real job, one of them, is to play experimental and improvised music for interpretive dance classes at Roger Williams College. Sometimes that involves banging on a tambourines and moaning, sometimes it means lighting up crazy techno beats, or stomping his foot while playing guitar a la the early Delta bluesmen. "You learn on the fly whether something works or not," says Bartone. "If you see the dancers aren't getting it, you've gotta get something together pretty quick." Logically, then, Bartone found that a lot of ideas from this kind of focused improvisation were worth exploring. Hence, Ohm, Fat Buddah's debut album that stems, at least in part from the composer's work in dance class. Together with bassist Ryan Clausius, guitarist Tom Tsouris, and drummer Brendan Ormsby, Fat Buddah traverses an interpretive soundscape of powerful, Cure-fired pop and synth- and sample-driven chaos. Throughout the album, Bartone's presence looms large, with cynical rants and attitude-heavy performance art. To its credit, Ohm is trend-free, reflecting nothing of the music scene's current climate, local or otherwise. Rather, Bartone sees the world in all its inconsistencies and imperfections as a colorful source of inspiration. Songs like "Bianca-com" finds the entire world meeting at one pornographic website; the spoken-word driven "Honey of a Drop" is evocative and daring, while the more conventional "Happy" feels like solo John Lennon on quaaludes. "Living in Providence," a sarcastic bender that cleverly illustrates some of the city's cheesy enchantment, and the funky tech-tronica of "High Art Low Life," are songs Bartone wrote for an independent film, also called "High Art Low Life." Fat Buddah's eclecticism and brazen artistry on Ohm have attracted the attention of a number of labels but nothing's nailed down as yet. "I'm not sure how far I can take this," says Bartone, "but I'm really interested in the whole process of the business of music. We'll just see how far it can go. It's my entire intention of doing this for a living."

Location Providence, RI - USA

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