“It sounds like Prince getting beaten up by Ween on the Enterprise.”

“No, it sounds like Prince getting beaten up by Ween at Studio 54.”

Museum of Science is sitting in their basement studio, contemplating the sound of their new CD.
Jon McCormack tries to remember what he wrote in their press release: “Chrystal Method meets Parliament Funkadelic in Frank Zappa’s science class.”

However you say it, “How To Dismantle a Waste Fat Explosive,” the follow up to their 2004 debut “Oblique Music for Soundtracks That Don’t Exist,” hits the streets on Saturday, April 15, at a CD release show at the Dover Brick House. Sixth Root will open, starting at 9 p.m.

The new 10-track disc was created as part of the Seacoast-wide RPM Challenge to write and record an album in the month of February. It finds the trio digging even deeper into their self-described “electro-soul-hip-hop-progressive-comedy” niche.

“We went (into February) with the idea of ‘Let’s really create some messed up stuff,’” says Sean LaRose, a.k.a. LeBaron, who contributes keyboards, bass and computer programming.

“And what popped out was a Museum of Science recording,” finishes McCormack, who plays a double-necked bass/guitar (custom built “to look like a spaceship that crashed”) and is known onstage as MC Foodcourt.

“How To Dismantle a Waste Fat Explosive” features more of drummer Jamie Perkins/Dr. Bunsen Honeyjones on vocals than on the previous release. The disc also features a vacuum cleaner, a kazoo, a cat, some cowbell, a lot of samples from the RPM orientation meeting, some guest spots for two-fifths of the band Sixth Root, and the band’s only cover song, “N.H.’s A’ight If You Like Science,” which Scissorfight apparently digs.

All three play in more traditional bands, including Starch, in which they play together. Perkins’ bands, past and present, include Biscuit Heads, Stone Soup and Famous, and McCormack has been with Fly Spinach Fly, Smoke Up jOhnny and possibly Camarojuana, though his memory is fuzzy on that.
Including a computer as a member of MOS has allowed them to try a completely different approach to making music.

Rather than writing and recording, they gather in LaRose’s basement studio in Dover, compiling songs like a six-armed musical monkey, experimenting with guitar or bass riffs, drum beats, self-sampled loops and found sounds, assembling the music on the computer and recording as they go.
“We still start with the same ideas as a traditional band—a riff or a chord change,” McCormack says. “But the way we compose it is more piece by piece. We don’t get in a room together and record something. Or if we did, we’d end up chopping it up.”

McCormack says he can trace a song’s creation by the stack of dated discs, burned after each recording session, that float around his car.

“There will be these various mixes that may or may not make the final cut. Or they’re altered. You get used to listening to the final album, then you go back to an old disc and realize the song is completely different than (how it started),” Perkins says.

Not everything works. The band once spent some time figuring out what mike to use to record the sound of a fistful of wrenches being dropped on the floor, which didn’t work so much. At other times, a song evolves out of a series of happy accidents—like when Perkins arrived at the studio one day to find LaRose trying to record samples from his vacuum cleaner, and “Heppa Filter” was born (the last line of the song is a pleased Perkins noting “Hey, it actually started smoking”).

Or a song develops in layers. “Republican Driveby” started when LaRose bought a new keyboard. He tried out a keyboard line. “That’s cool, I’ll just lay that down,” he thought to himself. Then Perkins showed up and liked it. “So Jamie put down some drums,” LaRose continues. “Then the next step to that song was the cat, Oscar. I had the keyboard set up in front of me on the keyboard stand. Anytime we were down there, the cat would harass us and we’d harass the cat. So I hit record and set the cat on the keyboard. There’s a line in the song, ‘And this is the part where the cat played the keyboard,’ and that’s that line. That was the basic structure to start with. But when you record that stuff, you can move it around on the computer. So we cut up some of the drums, and moved that around.” Perkins sat down and wrote some lyrics, and McCormack added the bass and his own rant. “That particular song came together really fast. Maybe all within a day,” LaRose says.

The special challenge for MOS is figuring out how to take a song live after it’s been recorded. “For a long time, we didn’t think we’d be able to,” Perkins says. But taking the computer on stage—with lots of cables and fingers crossed—and playing live parts over the pre-recorded sound beds brings the songs to life in a whole new way.

The first rehearsal for “Waste Fat,” in the band’s dimly lit, circa 1963 wood-paneled recording room, included more than a few raised eyebrows—as in, “Hey, that wasn’t so bad.” And there were some moments of “Is that right?” and “We’re going to have to figure that out.” To play  “Waste Fat” songs live, they’ll now have to mike Perkins for vocals. Overall, the rehearsal went better than expected, though. More often than not, they seem to be performing and thinking with a single brain.

Asked what distinguishes “Waste Fat” from their next album, due out in early fall, McCormack says “The next album I think…” and Perkins finishes, “I think is still going to be our best.”
How so?

“More dense and packed,” McCormack says.

“A little more accessible?” asks LaRose.

“I like to think a little more focused,” says Perkins.

“It’s going to be our ‘Purple Rain’,” McCormack concludes.

When asked if their compositional style, use of computer technology and the fact that they seem to take everything as a joke disqualifies them as a “real band,” McCormack seems truly offended.
“That question would imply that if you’re being funny you can’t be a real band, but I grew up listening to Frank Zappa,” McCormick says. “Come see a live show and you’ll know.”

Fan response backs him up. They band has been packing Seacoast shows and occasionally playing in Boston and they picked up a Spotlight award on April 5 for “Best Alternative Band.”
So what does their music sound like?

When Perkins gave his mother “Oblique Music,” he says she told him, “I thought there was something wrong with my car.”

LaRose tells of giving a disc to a woman who works at the counter at Café Ciabatta.

“I get seizures,” she told him, laughing. “I couldn’t listen to it. It was going to give me a seizure.”

LaRose’s reaction? “That’s awesome.”

Museum of Science
with Sixth Root
Dover Brick House
 2 Orchard St., Dover
Saturday, April 15, 9 p.m., $3
603-749-3838