The edge of town

V. Majestic and Men's Recovery Project bring the noise

by Bob Gulla

Their musical purviews are expansive, rife with possibilities, full of color and the kind of ripe ideas bands need to stay relevant and prolific. After listening to the latest albums by two of our edgier consorts, you'll understand why the Providence musical landscape will only benefit by their boundary-busting presence.

V. Majestic: Dynamic Alloy aka R.I.P. V. Majestic
Somewhere in the muck between Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Sun Ra, Eno, and, OK, let's just say it, Six Finger Satellite, rises the triumphant local avant-jammers V. Majestic -- Frank Difficult, Robert Jazz, Johnny Ra, Gerard Heroux, and Stuart Powers.

Their mesmerizing new album, sometimes known as Dynamic Alloy, began conceptually as a single with a couple of B-sides. They had envisioned the title track, a quirky chestnut that combines the distorted guitar of the Mummies with a Herb Alpert trumpet motif, and were looking to pad it with a couple of related off-kilter studio creations. The project was intended to be a stop-gap while the V. planned their official second release. But something happened on the way to the studio. Enough ideas cropped up -- themes, riffs, concepts -- to make an entire album. "Everything fell into place," says guitarist Jazz. "We had one strong track we liked a lot and a b-side, then it blossomed into more tracks as we sifted through stuff. We decided we really liked certain things. As I listen to it now, I really think it holds together."

From the wry groove of the opening title tune, through the full-on freak out of "Sub Zero One" and the sinuous, 11-minute song cycle "Remove Yourself," the recording does hold together, in a twisting-and-turning, herky-jerky kind of way. It runs high with long, flowing electronic and organic hues, never reluctant to veer off to uncharted places, but never gone long enough to lose its listeners. The recording, like the band's debut, is full of big ideas instigated by the kind of adventurous artists that can pull them off. According to Jazz, they employed the same working methods they did on the first album. "We still did a lot of mixing up of lo-fi and hi-fi sources, throwing them together," he says. "Some things come from ultra-lo-fi cassette tapes and other things are recorded from scratch at Sound Station Seven down in Wakefield. It makes for a real dense listen, but I think from a style standpoint it's consistent."

One senses from hearing Dynamic Alloy that V. Majestic's got a long, fertile road ahead. With a broad palette of musical tinting, and a deep pool of inspiration from which to draw, the band will only be restrained by its own personal limitations. And on this record at least -- an album that just seemed to arise casually -- those limitations don't appear to exist.

Men's Recovery Project: Bolides Over Basra (Load Records)
After 11 single releases, this is the first full-length project from Men's Recovery Project. Band principals Neil Burke and Sam McPheeters have worked on the album on and off for three years and the labor has paid off immensely. Bolides Over Basra is an important work in edgy instrumental and electronic music, rife with courageous concepts and uncompromising sentiment.

A song cycle of sorts, Burke and McPheeters, with the help of Six Finger Satellites Jay Ryan and Rick Pelletier, hinge together 14 songs on, of all places, the Middle East, touching on things like illegal detention, airport security, North African cuisine, Persian nightlife, secret monkey auctions, public leprosy, and advanced clap. If the ideas seem rather, er, exotic, the grooves are wholeheartedly domestic, falling somewhere between Devo, Beefheart, Joy Division, analog electronica and the angular post-guitar rock of early Gang of Four.

"In The Eunuch's Wine Cellar," for example, presents a perfect example of neo-modern Beefheart, with Burke positing:"The door, it seems to be locked! The door it seems to be locked!" That track's immediately followed by the synth-serious Joy Division-inspired work "In Khartoum," which is followed by the deep-instro-fantasia of "The Olive Salesman," whose synth line sounds like a steel drum.

There are some excellent ideas across Bolides Over Basra, some excellent execution of wild-eyed and imaginative sonic concepts. Burke and McPheeters, who have been working together since 1993, have finally, after working in some rather trying conditions with many different line-ups, put out something to stand behind. "Musically," explains Burke, "we've gotten better over the course of time, especially working with the Six Finger guys. This is the first time we got down to focusing on music. I'm definitely happy about it."

A new problem facing MRP right now is location. Everyone's living in different places, making a gig, a rehearsal, even a discussion difficult.

"Right now, we're not even a real Providence band," says Burke. "Sam [McPheeters] has moved to LA," he explains, "while our new bassist, Joe Preston, also of the Melvins and Earth, lives in Olympia, way out west. The live stuff gets a little tricky." Despite the obstacles, Men's Recovery Project has every intention of hitting the road this summer in support of the album.

"Touring is fun for us," says Burke. "It's a lot of asinine antics onstage, with stupid masks, robots, slides. It always comes off like a big mess. This time we're going to emphasize being a good band over the schtick. But we're still going to encourage the chaos factor, that unpredictability."

WANDERING EYE. The slightly warmer weather seems to be bringing with it the possibilities of worthwhile nocturnal activities. There's a very cool show happening on Friday the 18th, at the Century Lounge. Glass Attic, Glint, Illustrious Day, and Lackadaisic will demonstrate just what exactly they're up to these days.

An extraordinary artist, Garnet Rogers, returns to Stone Soup on Saturday. The show opens with a Hoot [open mike], at 8 p.m. in the Undercroft of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church on the State House side of the mall. It's preceded at 7 p.m. by the Soup's monthly dinner of cheap, primo Latino eats served by Hispanic members of the church. Admission is $10.

Also on Saturday, the Green Room presents recording artists the Pills with local heroes Jimmy Jack Stark.

There's a good-cause gig at Brown Saturday to benefit the Worcester Artists Alliance. Seems the Worcester folks lost their lease over a legal technicality (sound familiar?), now the well-intentioned group is seeking another space. Cash, of course, is a problem and Providence area artists seek a solution. The show, from 7:30 p.m. to midnight at Brown University's Production Workshop is an all-ages night. A $5 donation is suggested and encouraged. Talent includes Anton Bordman (ex-Woken by Wire), Feisel, the Andrea Gale, Odesses in Dresses (Xander and Bea), the Boys of Now (from Philadelphia), Plymouth Rock, and Rebuilthangartheory.

Bob Gulla can be reached at b_gulla@yahoo.com.

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