Odds On

The trees still sag, their branches caked with ice, but it’s long enough since the recent ice storm that the roads of Kansas City, Kansas, are mostly navigable. I park outside a stately, olive-colored Victorian house on a narrow street in the Prescott neighborhood, not far from downtown. Behind it, the overcast sky glows orange from reflected city lights. In the air, bass guitar and drums reverberate.

One of Kansas City’s most far-out acts is practicing in this house tonight. In fact, this band, in various forms, has been practicing here for nearly 16 years.

Tonight, the players are a guitarist, two keyboardists, a drummer, a bassist and a guy playing bongos and other auxiliary percussion. Later, a guy with a baritone sax, an egg shaker and a theremin will show up.

They’re stuffed comfortably into the house’s sitting room, along with two dogs, in front of a roaring fire. Behind one of the keyboardists stands a huge, half-dismantled vintage piano, decorated with what appear to be birds’ nests. Incense permeates the toasty air. All that’s missing is Wilford Brimley on the Jew’s harp to make this band, Monta at Odds, a supreme seasonal delight. Nonetheless, the band is gonna roast up some funky musical chestnuts tonight.

Sandy-haired, 30-something brothers Dedric (bass) and Delaney (Fender Rhodes piano and synths) Moore form the core of MAO. The house belongs to Delaney. A general contractor by trade, specializing in old homes, he has been restoring the place since 1992, when he and his brother began using it as a practice space for their alt-rock band, Big Sky Showcase.

Now, the music they play sounds more like the ’70s jazz-rock-funk fusion of Weather Report crossed with the slinky French-lounge grooves of Air. There’s also ample Ennio Morricone, plus bits of Pink Floyd and Can. Whatever it is, it’s an odd thing to be hearing in a Victorian sitting room, especially one in KCK.

Detached from the main hubs of the local scene (midtown, Lawrence), the Moore brothers have carved out an interesting little musical history in WyCo.

Having abandoned rock upon discovering Portishead in the late ’90s, the brothers took the name Monta and started making vibey trip-hop instrumentals. In addition to Portishead, their influences include electronica acts such as the Orb and Underworld and whatever DJ Ray Velasquez played on his KJHK 90.7 radio show.

“For us, he [DJ Ray] was a champion of the underground when he was here,” Dedric says. “He was the guy who kicked the door open and said, ‘Pay attention to this.'”

Dedric and Delaney have kicked doors open in their own way, taking minidisc recorders out into the world and making ambient recordings in places such as Turkey, the capitol building in Omaha and the now-closed Indian Springs Mall in KCK.

Delaney’s recordings of public spaces in Turkey add a sense of the exotic to Monta’s 2005 debut release, the jazzy, mostly electronic Unsuspecting. Closer to home, the recordings made in the Omaha capitol dome and the mall, enhanced with snyth-based ambient music, make up the soundtrack for UMKC film professor Daven Gee‘s documentary Our Mall, which is about the closing of Indian Springs.

They were inspired by the sampling techniques of fellow down-tempo artists such as DJ Shadow, but the Moore brothers also took microphones to the outside world because they wanted to escape the confining, sterile studio environment. “We like sounds appearing that we’re not used to,” Dedric says. “The accidents that happen give it a life of its own.”

Now as Monta at Odds (they lengthened the name because a German musician claimed the handle “Monta”), Dedric and Delaney are dealing in accidents of an instrumental, improvisational variety.

Dedric’s pulsing, melodic bass and Delaney’s artfully unhinged Rhodes work frame the band’s central character, which is fleshed out by the rock-jazz backbeat of American Catastrophe drummer Eric Bessenbacher, the electric guitar of Tom Romero, the burbling synth of Zack Bozich, the bongos and shakers of Iraqi percussionist Samer Saba, and the baritone sax and spacey theramin of Sam Hughes.

It could easily be a jammy mess, but the band’s first recording, Gringo, holds together as the product of like-minded musicians all tuned in to the same tasteful, groovy wavelength. And as for the live show, I have no reason to doubt their ability to warm up a club just as comfortably as they do a Victorian sitting room.

Bring your own incense when Monta at Odds opens for old pal DJ Ray Velazquez Saturday at the Record Bar.