Welcome to Dub-Rock: Professor Murder

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OUT ON THE BLOGS, they call it Professor Murder.

Over the past two years the New York City quartet has been giving away MP3s — aka MPFrees — to various music sites and tastemakers, as well on Professor Murder's own Web site and MySpace page. It's built a buzz around the dance-dub band, which has thus far released just one EP: "Professor Murder Rides the Subway." (A new 12-inch, "Dutch Hex" should drop soon.)

"We're all pretty active surfers and downloaders and a lot of the music we like and listen to we get online," said bassist Tony Plunkett. "So I think it's natural to want to throw our stuff into the mix."

"Mix" is a good word to describe Professor Murder, which performs at the Black Cat on Thursday. Imagine Adam Ant pinching Jamaican dancehall lyrics as two bass lines, drums and a keyboard squeal out pulsating punk-funk grooves.

Pitchfork Media called the band's good-time sound "brainless … fun," a description only mildly disputed by Plunkett.

"I wouldn't say 'brainless' but I'm OK with 'fun.' The lyrics are definitely not reaching too deep since they're our last consideration in writing a song. It's more about the way they sound than the particular word choice."

Sometimes the word choices come directly from other songs. Vocalist Michael Bell-Smith took lyrics from dancehall deejay Red Rat for the Professor Murder song "The Mountain," but rather than trying to mimic Jamaican patois he Anglicizes the words. It's the sort of little-but-significant thing that helps make Professor Murder come across as earnest music nuts bent on creating their own sound, even as they cherry-pick from other genres and songs to create their music.

"Mike definitely makes a conscious effort to use his own voice and I'm glad it translates," Plunkett said. "Mike has taken lyric reappropriation to dizzying heights. It's funny to me that people don't pick up on it too often."

Jamaican music is filled with borrowed phrases, songs and rhythms, so what Professor Murder is doing isn't scandalous — unless you're bothered by the fact that they are four white kids living in New York City, not black youths from Kingston. But Professor Murder is filled with hard-core fans of Jamrock, and the band's music sounds like the result of great record collections.

"We love Jamaican music from A to Z," Plunkett said. "Some of my favorites are Gregory Isaacs, The Congos, Slim Smith, Super Cat. Movado is tearing it up right now."

Professor Murder nabbed its name from a character on the cult HBO comedy "Mr. Show," but the group's colorful painted logo came from the streets of New York City.

"Mike and I both worked on Canal Street years ago where the majority of the name painters hang out, and we always talked about getting the name done," Plunkett said. "It actually ended up being somewhat of an odyssey for me since the first guy refused to do 'murder.' He did a beautiful 'professor,' too, but he wouldn't even sell it to me — just wanted no part of it. ... I tried to tell him it was a German name but no dice. Anyway, I found a less-principled sign-maker to do it and then we scanned it in and the rest is, as they say, the rest."

» Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW; with The Boggs, Thu., 9 p.m., $10; 202-397-7328. (U St.-Cardozo)

Top photo by Dustin Ross; other images courtesy Professor Murder