Mysterious Clouds

Brothers Dedric and Delaney Moore of Monta At Odds devise retro jazz spy sounds with elements of spaghetti western and futuristic electronic beats using programmed rhythms and sounds, guitar, bass, drums, and more with backing from additional musicians. The first full-length recording Gringo contains thirteen instrumental tracks that reflect the brother’s taste for ‘60s-’70s Bollywood as well as late-’60s Italian cinema soundtracks. Combined with live performance, the result is a gritty soundscape of funky down tempo vignettes.
“Faith” burbles like a water fountain as the disembodied voice of a soul shaman reverberates over distortion, a sultry beat, and murky synth. It’s an insouciant gentleman’s stroll through dens of inequity and streets of temptation, reveling in the dazzle of mirrors and neon signs refracting light through a haze of smoke.

“Take a Chance” evokes the electro-folk vibe of Folk Implosion’s “Natural One,” but with a slinky beat underlying a spaced-out warble, fuzzy horns, and eerie keys. The airy, slow jam of “Return Of The Gringo” features sly funk, a jazzy undertone, sexy horns, and the hypnotic voice of Erin O’Neill. It’s a swanky song that could be the soundtrack for an afterparty that no one wants to end.

Clocking in at just over eight minutes, “Gritty Streets” is an urban meditation on the prowl; the mood of a night cop in a hovercraft cruising past dark alleyways and jazz clubs in Toronto or Chicago or Milan, circa 2084.

Monta At Odds conjures tracks like “Warbler” and “Quite Actually” that one might easily hear on down tempo online radio channels like Soma FM’s Groove Salad or radioioAmbient. Other compositions like “Brief As Can Be” and “I’ll Pull The Trigger” kick back with mellow funk and a jazzy swagger; meanwhile, “Caught Mid-step” is a frenetic dash that a bleary-eyed gambler might make to pay off a loan shark before time runs out.

Gringo inspires a cinematic escapade, casting shadows and sculpting sound that encourages the listener to imagine characters inhabiting these delicious moments and seek them out before the last seconds of night tick away. - Present Magazine

Odds On
With a new sound and band, the brothers behind Monta at Odds work it out just fine.
Published on December 20, 2007
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. - Pitch Weekly Magazine

Dedric and Delaney Moore recline in Dedric's combined living room and studio in Kansas City, Kansas. Surrounding the brothers, both in their midthirties, are a drum set, bongos, pianos and keyboards, records, a beat machine and a computer.

Dedric looks out through droopy eyes, and Delaney's hair is in tangles. They both just got off work.

"I'm a general contractor. I probably listen to six to eight hours of music in my headphones every day," Delaney says.

Unlike most mixed electronic music albums, the brothers' first release under the moniker Monta, Unsuspecting, recorded a year ago, is a focused, instrumental, mostly downtempo effort. To the critical listener, one thing is certain — the brothers' music is heavy in melodies, reflecting (even if they'd disagree) a pleasantly psychedelic sound.

"We mix our albums for headphone listening," Dedric says. "There's a lot of ear candy in there."

"My wife stated it well," Delaney says. "She said that what we listen to is pornography. People that get into visual pornography have just had sex too much, and then they get into weirder shit."

"Yeah, I don't like noise just for the sake of noise," Dedric adds. "But we try to ignore trends of what's going on and just focus on what we want to hear."

As far as categorizing the sound, downtempo doesn't quite capture it. That's a rather broad genre, usually describing music with leanings toward dub, jazz, soul, drum-'n'-bass, hip-hop and ambient. To the everyday listener, trip-hop would probably be the easiest term to slap on Monta (think DJ Shadow's older work, DJ Krush, Portishead, Massive Attack, Mark Farina's compiled Mushroom Jazz mixes, the Thievery Corporation and Kruder & Dorfmeister).

It's no surprise that the brothers Moore aren't fans of classification. Their aim is to make music that they can listen to years down the road and still find relevant. Prompted by his trollings of MySpace (which is chock-full of electronic artists pimping their beats under various guises), Dedric points out that many musicians are "naïve enough to say, 'You've never heard anything like this before.'"

Dedric and Delaney have heard a lot. It helps that these two boys from KCK have a broad worldview, with inspiration drawn from travel across the United States and to Japan, Turkey, Argentina and Brazil.

"I think we connect with people outside of Kansas City more so than with people in Kansas City," Delaney says.

DJs in the UK, California, Florida and the Southeast have given Monta airplay. The vast majority of their online album sales have come from Europe. Delaney and Dedric both are quick to acknowledge that most of the music they listen to is from overseas.

Sunday, Monta performs a rare DJ set at the Record Bar — a set full of "whatever we're listening to this month." They're opening for the more throbbing and funky Austrian DJ and producer Rodney Hunter, who's signed to international heavyweight duo Kruder & Dorfmeister's G-Stone record label. Also spinning is Ian Frost, a newcomer to Kansas City who has organized events in Phoenix and Dallas.

Expect a chill evening — in the best way possible. - Pitch Weekly Magazine

What kind of music should one expect from two white brothers in their early 30s who were born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas, where each owns his own remodeling company? Blue-collar blues? Kitschy, hardcore metal? Eminem-style confessional rap? Thankfully, none of the above.

Instead, Dedric and Delaney Moore, the brothers who make up Monta, produce ambient electronic music steeped in dub, house, funk, jazz, dreamy live-instrument textures, mysterious vocal samples and, most amazingly, an international sensibility that belies the stereotypes associated with their native 'hood.

Soft and unobtrusive, but sly and complex enough to remain safely above bland mood music, Unsuspecting (the brothers' first album) presents a cohesive collection of original tracks and obscure remixes. The overwhelming emphasis on groove -- rather than art or experimentation -- keeps the recording from being much more than a chill-out accessory, but in a world constantly accelerated by technology, it's nice to be reminded that machines can also be used to slow things down.
-Jason Harper - Music Editor - Pitch Weekly

Monta's "Unsuspecting" is like a trip down lost highway, slow and moving, melancholy, but always offering hope for what lies beyond the horizon. If that doesn't do it for you, think of Monta as Ulrich Schnauss or Christian Kleine's distant, moodily introspective, more organic and jazzy American cousins.

The music of "Unsuspecting" is often dark, always moody and perfect for a long, quiet drive, or a slow night in. While Monta draw from inspirations of jazz, and dub, their sound is an entirely unique combination of brushed snares, jazz horns, drifting string pads, abstract, dubby vibes, melancholy guitar and piano, with sparse and always distorted vocals.

This album is more for closing your eyes and drifting away than nodding your head or moving your feet, and if you can make any level of emotional connection the first time you hear it, "Unsuspecting" is guaranteed to grow on you like a vine. In addition to its standard CD release, this album is also available in a special, limited round tin case.
- www.properlychilled.com magazine

Unsuspecting from Monta has been three years in the making and it shows! Lovingly produced and mixed, this downbeat, dubbed out masterpiece evokes memories of warm hazy days and blissed out nights. Go straight to the Monta site and order this 5-star CD direct - you won't regret it. - www.mimaradio.com