Experimental rock band makes their name known
Formed in the Musicians Guild, Amanita often performs at venues across Rhode Island and Massachusetts, including Kingston’s own 193 Coffee House. PHOTO CREDIT: @amanita.band on Instagram
“Organized chaos” is what you can expect from local trio Amanita.
Formed in March of 2021, this band, composed of Sebastian Toledo on guitar, Gwen Babalato on bass and Travis Garrahan on drums, creates collaborative genre-bending music. Garrahan and Toledo began jamming in February and later invited Babalato to join them after meeting at the URI Musician’s Guild.
Babalato and Toledo both attended URI, while Garrahan attended CCRI. The band name is courtesy of fungi growing in Toledo’s backyard.
“Where I live, there is a bunch of amanita mushrooms that grow, and I’m really into mycology,” Toledo said. “It’s perfect, it’s a cool name.”
Amanita self-describes its music as “cum-core,” which according to Toledo, blends aspects of noise, math rock and ambient music.
“We just kind of make whatever we kind of like,” Toledo said. “I feel like it’s some of our songs and more on the like, post-punk side and the other ones are way more on the noise side.”
The collaborative nature and wide array of musical interests all contribute to the band’s sound.
“I think we have like, we all kind of have a really diverse, like music tastes like honestly,” Garrahan said. “Like most of our songs have like, a lot of different genres and like just totally different sounds, we don’t really stick to one sound.”
The members of Amanita find inspiration from various artists and musical groups. Toledo is most inspired by the progressive indie rock band battles and highlighted their structure as a major influence.
“It’s like a large influence of small trio/duos, making like a really wide array of sounds,” he said. “Being able to do a lot of really cool math [rock] stuff, synth stuff, guitar stuff. I like that. I like looping and stuff.”
Garrahan is most inspired by Zach Hill, drummer for the experimental hip-hop group Death Grips.
“That kind of stuff has definitely been the biggest influence on me,” Garrahan said. “I try not to rip him off too much.”
Babalato takes influence from many different types of music, including R&B, noise, hardcore and math rock, but always pays attention to the bassline.
Amanita had its first performance in June 2021 and has since performed at local venues in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, including multiple shows at URI. The members each get a lot out of playing live.
“Making a drum part that I’m proud of is always an awesome feeling,” Garrahan said. “Like whenever we’re playing live and, like, seeing people vibe to the music, it’s always a super gratifying feeling.”
Toledo and Babalato both echoed Garrahan’s sentiment, sharing that they love looking out into crowds while performing and feeling their excitement and anticipation.
So far the band has released a demo tape, “hemostasis,” that was produced and distributed on physical cassette tapes as well as a digital recording on their Bandcamp website. “hemostasis” is a collection of Amanita’s “ambient sounds and loops made in 3 days,” according to their site.
Looking ahead, the band wants to continue to improve, perform live and make more music while also balancing work and other commitments.
“We’re all in [life] changes right now,” Babalato said. “We’re looking forward to writing new music and hopefully playing more shows at the end of the year.”
More information can be found on the group’s Instagram page @amanita.band and their Bandcamp website.