Organized Crimes can’t keep a low profile forever

In an e-mail a few days before our interview, Alec Nicholas explained that his band, Organized Crimes, didn’t make a habit of practicing. All the same, he wrote, I was welcome to join him and his bandmate at the Strawberry Hill apartment they share. My presence would give them a good excuse, Nicholas said, to rehearse a few songs.

When I arrive, the apartment — a spacious residence on the top floor of a two-story building — is dark, the air filled with a thick fog. There’s a large hall lined with closed doors, and Nicholas leads me through one of them, where Cortland Gibson is setting up the band’s equipment. He’s crouched behind a mobile station tricked out with various loop pedals, drum machines, knobs, electronic pads and wires. Nicholas directs me to a folding chair before assisting Gibson; both men use the flashlights on their iPhones to navigate.

Fifteen minutes later: music. Gibson’s hands fly over his immense makeshift soundboard as his body oscillates to the synth sounds shaking out of the nearby speakers. He’s a joyful Dr. Frankenstein at the operating table. Nicholas stands off to the side, microphone in hand, singing in a high voice heavily distorted by effects. Behind them, over a white sheet, a projector blends psychedelic images and video clips.

Over four songs, Nicholas and Gibson trade lead-vocal duties. Nicholas is on drums for two, setting up “Game Over Song” with a glittering, cymbal-intensive introduction as laserlike twangs ricochet off the walls. On “Bel-Ray Flats,” he demolishes a ZZ Top-worthy guitar riff while Gibson takes over on drums, both sticks in one hell-raising hand. At one point, during a song that they haven’t yet titled, both band members are reaching over each other, adjusting their loops and turning dials.

It seems like an elaborate game of Twister, yet it’s a riveting sonic event. These men are doing just fine without a regular practice schedule.

“People always tell us, like, ‘You just need more people,” Gibson tells me later. He and Nicholas sit across from me at their kitchen table. Last year, Gibson adds, their group was a visually minded six-piece. “When we shot all those videos [they’re on the band’s YouTube page], they [the other members] lost interest in sticking around because it took us so long to do. But that kind of thing is important for us. We knew from the get-go that we wanted our shows to be something more than just a show. We wanted it to be an experience.”

So, after three years with six members, Organized Crimes cut the gang in half. And then, a few months ago, Sam Sartorius parted with Nicholas and Gibson. That further reduction of manpower hasn’t fazed the band — “Too much creative influence is cancer,” Gibson says — though they admit that the songs they play were conceived with several more hands in mind.

But Organized Crimes was probably always destined to be a duo. Nicholas and Gibson have been friends for the last 12 or so years, and they’ve played music together in some capacity for almost as long. They both grew up in the small town of Berlin, Delaware. Their move to Kansas City, Gibson says, came from a combination of making friends online — “This was around the time MySpace was popular” — and wanting to get out of their home state. Now, Gibson, 25, and Nicholas, 23, feel that their friendship is strong enough to withstand anything that happens to their band.

“It’s kind of like we’re married sometimes,” Nicholas says, “because we’ve lived together for a very long time and we’ve invested so much money together, so we own so many things together.”

Gibson agrees: “We’ve put in so much time and money. We’re nowhere near thinking about stopping. We’ve never thought twice about it or doubted ourselves, even though we’ve never really done anything substantial.”

Gibson is referring to the band’s lack of online material: just two EPs on a Bandcamp page, the more recent from October 2013. But a 7-inch EP titled Bel-Ray Flats is on the way, due on High Dive Records as soon as the vinyl is in hand. And the group has a full-length album in the process of recording that they hope to have out next year.

“It really takes us a long time,” Gibson says of recording and releasing music, “but we definitely need a bigger catalog of music, so that people can find us.”

A few more minutes at this table, and I might not be able to find these two. The fog machine has continued to run, and Gibson is dressed in black. Nicholas, his long hair loose around his face, the strands disappearing into his animal-print button-up, is camouflaged more by his conspicuous quiet; he has let Gibson answer most of my questions. But once you discover Organized Crimes, their music doesn’t let you go easily.