Mercury Rev: A Hit and User Unfriendly : Forget structure and melody. The experimental noise band only produces those by accident. But it’s winning critical acclaim.

While most rock bands are busy trying to build perfect song structures and melodies, the experimental noise band Mercury Rev only employs those elements by accident.

“We’re not trying to make radio-friendly hits and if there are those song structures there, well, it’s not intentional,” says Mercury Rev’s lead vocalist David Baker.

The six-piece group has made a name for itself by dismantling basic rock tunes, tossing out the riffs and bridges and then adding such environmental effects as the roar of New York’s Time Square or the sucking of a common, household vacuum. As seemingly user- un friendly as the approach may be, it’s won the Buffalo-based band acclaim in alternative music circles.

The band’s new album, “Boces,” has hit the Top 10 on the college charts and No. 1 on the English independent charts. The band just finished headlining a packed tour across Britain and is now set as opening act for Porno for Pyros’ U.S. tour, though no L.A. dates are planned.

But in a typical twist, the band seems to measure its artistic achievements more by the amount of people it’s put off than those it’s attracted. Baker’s favorite instance occurred recently when the band was playing the “Lollapalooza ‘93” second stage at Fiddler’s Green in Denver and a venue official pulled its plug.

“A guy who looked like McCloud in a cowboy hat said he thought it was a bus idling,” Baker says. “He started fighting with our soundman and it got violent. I don’t think it was because we were too loud though; I think it’s because we make a lot of different noises. I guess he was trying to do his job and didn’t want his brain messed with, which is our job. That’s why they hired us.”

Baker says that there are plenty of fans who want Mercury Rev to mess with their gray matter.

“We’re confusing, beautiful and emotional at the same time,” he explains. “Our sound varies from day to day, hour to hour, second to second. Every show is different and we don’t rehearse, we never have.”

Mercury Rev was not spawned out of Buffalo’s music underground, but rather from the city’s art film scene. The band, which includes drummer Jimy Chambers, second vocalist and guitarist Jonathan Donahue, guitarist Grasshopper, flutist Suzanne Thorpe and bass player Dave Fridmann, started by making bizarre soundtracks for independent art films.

“I don’t think we ever really looked at this as a band,” says Baker. “We just did lots of music for films and weird stuff. We used to take apart television sets and get sounds out of that because we had no money. When we made the record it evolved out of making tons of soundtracks for films and stuff like that. . . . We only got called a band after we started playing live.”

Mercury Rev hit big in Britain first with the 1991 debut “Yerself Is Steam” on the U.K. independent label Mint Records. Videos from the album aired regularly on British television and the band was embraced by England’s weekly music press. Melody Maker went so far as to name “Yerself” the fourth-best album of the year.

“No. 5 was Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ and No. 3 was R.E.M.,” recalls Baker. “We were thinking, ‘Gee, we’re sandwiched in between two platinum-sellers and we’ve sold two copies. We gotta get a bigger label.’ ”

The band signed to Beggars Banquet in the U.K. and Sony Music in the United States later that year. Though Mercury Rev’s debut was finally released in the States in ‘92, it wasn’t until “Boces” came out in May that the U.S. really caught on.

Like the music, Mercury Rev’s influences aren’t exactly orthodox. “An influence could be a car backfiring, chocolate, sex or deprivation of sex. It’s more emotion that influences us than music. We don’t really see any one band that’s setting our precedent. That’s too limiting.

“Well, the Beatles are a slight influence to us in the fact that once they had some success, they just did whatever they wanted to do and people came to them. I guess we did it the other way around.”