Secret identity

>>Brooklyn’s Professor Murder
is wrapped in a mystery

ENIGMATIC: Professor Murder

by JACK OATMON

Who is Professor Murder? That was among the perpetual barrage of questions concerning metropolitan goings-on that dogged the Mirror this week. The hunt for more information about this mysterious, calculating figure led this reporter down a winding trail of red herrings and circumstantial hunches, all the way to the eponymous, Brooklyn-based freak-funk quartet. Keyboardist and drummer Jesse Cohen does his best to delineate the suspect, but fuels more speculation than conclusion.

“We have some different theories,” explains Cohen. “Now it’s this character on the cover of our EP. He’s just sitting on the train with a paper bag on his head. But that’s just one of his personalities. He’s a guy who takes in the stuff around him and looks at the people on the train and listens to stuff. He’s this kind of outsider. He’s a bit like the elephant man, only not horribly disfigured.”

The description continues on to hint at another alter-ego, clearly connected to the activities of the suspect. “We also have this other band called King Oppression, where we do Professor Murder songs over rap and dancehall beats. So he’s a different version of Professor Murder, only he doesn’t have a bag over his head. But his back is always to the camera.”

Aside from the apparent identity crisis over their namesake, the four members of the groovy, disparately-influenced musical contraption face another conceptual challenge—that of where they fit within music culture.

“We’re playing some regular rock rooms and we’re also doing club nights with DJs where we’re the only band. I think we can do either one and they both work differently. But the other night at a rock show, I felt like, ‘We make dance music—what are we doing in this rock club?’ Then the next night I was thinking, ‘We’re just a band, man. What are we doing with all these DJs?’”

Most certainly not the first to experience such idiosyncrasies of genre placement, Professor Murder make clear reference to kindred misfits from the past. This rings through such things as insinuative lyrics borrowed from punk legends Crass, buried within their jangling cacophony.

“I don’t think Professor Murder has as explicit an agenda as Crass,” offers Cohen. “But we all think about things and it comes out in our music. I would say that, in the way we make music, there’s a general sense about intellectual property. A sense that it’s good to mess with things and people should make things by taking old things and making them new again, which, in itself, is a kind of political ethos.”

The band’s clever (or incidental) elusion of definition follows through to their eclectic group of peers as well, as demonstrated in a description of a tour they went on last spring.

“We played one show with Girl Talk, then we played a show with Matt and Kim. Then we played a show with Gang Gang Dance and Yacht. Then we played a show with Tussle, and after we played a show with Lady Sovereign. It was all different kinds of rooms, there were big clubs and DIY venues, and when we were done with that, we all thought those were great shows for Professor Murder.”

With Lynne T and Khiasma &
Masala at Lambi tonight,
Thursday, Aug. 23, 9 p.m., $12