Artist Matt Malone in his new efficiency at the Brookland Artspace Lofts

Back when Brookland Studios still stood at 3305 8th St. NE, the sound of passing Metro cars sometimes made its way into the art. Listen closely to “A Traitor in My Mind,” a song the D.C. indie rock band Last Tide recorded in 2009 at what was then an artists’ warehouse. The track starts gently, with a skeletal guitar figure and the gorgeous, wave-like crash of a train moving by, captured in a moment of recording-studio serendipity.

Two years later, the warehouse has been torn down. In place of the artists who worked there are a new class of artists who live at the address, too: The Brookland Artspace Lofts, which opened this summer, houses 39 subsidized apartments designed to do double duty as studios and homes.

Guiding me through his spacious new efficiency, artist Matt Malone points toward a set of recently completed charcoal drawings he made after hearing the Metro through his walls. At least one creative inspiration hasn’t changed.

But otherwise Artspace, which is next door to the studios of Dance Place, is a remarkable departure from the old dilapidated warehouse. Its mosaic centerpiece aside, the glassy, space-maximizing exterior could be swapped for any of D.C.’s newest, blandest pop-contemporary residential buildings. The pastel interior walls have the feel of a college dormitory.

And at Artspace’s first open house last week, the vibe was less open-studio than elementary-school-parents-night, with paintings and poems from many of the artists adorning the wide hallways. Crowds shuffled through the 20 or so apartments that were open to explore.

There are a handful of other dedicated art residences in the D.C. area. Artspace, a Minnesota-based non-profit, also operates a building of artist housing in Mount Rainier’s burgeoning Gateway Arts District. The Loree Grand in NoMa has leased 15 subsidized live/work units for artists, down from an initial set-aside of 30. Proponents are quick to tout the spaces’ economic importance: Having an art-friendly environment, development nostrums say, makes a town more attractive to everyone else. “For our city to thrive we need to retain affordable housing opportunities, but at the same time we need to support creativity and entrepreneurship,” says Anne Corbett, the executive director of the Cultural Development Corporation, a nonprofit that operates a number of local performance and work spaces and also consulted on the new Artspace. “An affordable live/work building supports those purposes.”

With Brookland Artspace, operators are hoping to help the area near Catholic University become the city’s next hub for artists. “The creation of an arts district is very much our intent,” Heidi Kurtze, Artspace’s director of property development, told Washington City Paper earlier this year.

In D.C., where rent is high and industrial space is scarce, arts hubs flower in insular pockets; we don’t have artist neighborhoods. So it’s telling to take a look at what kinds of artists actually populate the new Brookland version. Walking around Artspace last Tuesday, I encountered the names of painters, electronic musicians, sculptors, poets, street artists, a lighting designer, a jazz trumpeter—and a few residents whose work probably stretches what most people consider art, like a catering outfit and a purse designer. Every bohemia has to start with something.

But per the artists, there are few flaws to be found in the building: The efficiencies are spacious and comfortable, and one- and two-bedroom spaces are even larger. Designer Soyini George—a D.C. native whose line of children’s clothing is for sale in regional Whole Foods stores—moved to Artspace from “this horrible place on Benning Road,” she said. “This place is better for creativity.”

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Subsidized rents, of course, can still be expensive.

In order to live in Artspace, Malone had to earn no more than 60 percent of the area’s median income—which, according estimates on the building’s website, means $43,500 or less. But in order to demonstrate that he was good for the efficiency’s $970 rent, he also had to show he made at least $25,866. Then, he had to go before a panel of residents and artists from the community to prove he’s an artist.

Since moving in, Malone has divided his efficiency into a few distinct areas: an area to sleep, an area to eat, an entertainment area, and the largest area for working. He grabs two canvases that are hinged together—a Jasper Johns-esque American flag, painted over a backdrop of newspaper front pages from Sept. 12, 2011. He has to reach above his head to hold it up. He says the space has allowed him to create larger works than he has in the past.

Malone has been making art for about 10 years, ever since an accident in college left him paralyzed below the neck for several months. “Art sort of filled my time,” he says. Before moving to Artspace, he worked in an ad-hoc studio in his brother’s basement. Although he sells some art through gallery and DIY shows, most of his income is from his day job, selling foreign currency for the firm Tempest Consulting.

Mia Feuer, who has generated lots of buzz on the local gallery scene in recent years, was slightly more screwed before she secured an apartment in Artspace. She spent the summer at the Bemis Center of Contemporary Art in Omaha as an artist in resident, having given up her cheap room in a Wylie Street NE group house ($340 a month) and her closet-sized studio space in Arlington ($240). She was planning to return to D.C. in September, and had some pressing deadlines—she was a finalist in Bethesda’s Trawick Prize, and had committed works to a Flashpoint group show and the (e)merge art fair.

Feuer works as an adjunct professor at local universities, where she teaches sculpture. She’d only lined up two gigs by August for this semester and says Artspace was worried she was too low-income to make the rent. Eventually, Feuer got a third teaching job and won the Trawick’s $10,000 first-place prize. “I just never thought I would land such an amazing space,” she says.
Because Feuer creates large-scale sculptures, high ceilings and lots of floor space are musts—and give her even fewer options within D.C.’s regular studio market. “I have a bunch of dismembered sculpture parts,” she says of her new efficiency, which she describes as “mostly a big beautiful workspace...I like waking up in the morning and seeing what I’m building.”

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The artists who have gotten in look like they’re set for quite a while: Brookland Artspace had more than 100 applicants, and has filled all of its 39 live/work spaces. Although rents can rise at Artspace, guidelines set by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development will keep increases small. The $13.1 million space was mostly funded by the District’s Department of Housing and Community Development.

Things look a little riskier for artists who occupy privately owned art spaces, where there’s no government money guaranteeing their artiness. As first reported by WAMU, rents at the 52 O Street Studios—a warehouse space that contains both live/work and work spaces—are on the rise. Matt Pearson, a resident who composes music for theater, has only lived there a year, but he’s had one rent increase and expects another next year. He says the building, which was converted to artists spaces in 1979 and has many older artists, has seen more turnover than usual in recent years. “It’s possible a lot of artists won’t be able to work in O Street anymore,” he says. (The building’s management did not respond to requests for comment.)

Kendall Nordin, a multidisciplinary artist, says when she started using her 400-square foot workspace at O Street four years ago, rent was $12 per square foot. Now it’s $15. She helps clean the building to offset her rent.

Last year, Nordin considered applying to live at the Loree Grand, but decided it was too expensive; she made the same decision about Artspace, which is cheaper. Now, Nordin says an emphasis on artist live/work spaces over work spaces is misguided. Affordable housing and places for artists to work are separate problems, she says.

Nordin says some rooms at O Street have been carved into smaller, less functional spaces over time. Although there are a few well-organized work spaces in D.C., others are being swallowed by their changing surroundings. Gold Leaf Studios, a multipurpose space in Mount Vernon Square, is closing in January, and will be replaced by a large residential complex. On the other hand, another Brookland development near Artspace will include 27 work studios once it’s built.

All of which is nice, if you like neat walls and polished, approachable exteriors, says Nordin. “There are people who prefer glossy new spaces. Sometimes if you try to really fabricate an artist’s space, it doesn’t really lead to people being able to make things in the same way.” She’d rather see raw, vacant buildings be given over temporarily to artists. “I think there’s other ways of trying to solve the space problem,” she says. “If the city could come into agreements with developers sitting on properties—you don’t have to worry about the upkeep.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.

Due to a reporting error, the article originally misspelled Kendall Nordin's name.

The New York band Esque

This Saturday's Done & Done Festival doesn't stress collaboration so much as cross-pollination: Its 13 bands hail from New York and D.C., but some have roots in both cities. It's a fairly diverse lineup that's long on invention and longer on strong melodies. And at $12 a ticket (or $20 for music and unlimited booze) for about 10 hours of music, it's also a good value.

Like the GOG Blog, we see Done & Done as something of a cultural exchange. So we asked some of the acts: What can D.C. bands learn from New York ones? What can New Yorkers learn from Washingtonians? Read their answers, earnest and otherwise,  after the jump:

Kenny Brown, of New York's Byrds of Paradise, says location, location, location—or maybe not:

Personally I think that it's not a matter of location... Think about all the bands that made it out of the Midwest like Hüsker Dü or Pere Ubu. It's a matter of how you use your surroundings to progress in your music. Also, the Internet makes location obsolete in a sense where everyone can hear your music no matter where you are.

Rob Miller, of D.C.'s Last Tide, says your city matters—when you're trying to get some press:

D.C. musicians need to learn how to use the music press' notion that the city a band is from is a band's most important qualifier by convincing them that DC is beyond hip and cool. N.Y. bands have been going strong on this for about a decade.

Brandon Moses, of D.C.'s Laughing Man, lays out a five-point plan of things New York bands should know:

1. How to write arts grants.

2. That D.C. is a worthwhile place to play shows.

3. How to survive without a 24 hour grocery store on every corner.

4. How to not talk about Fight Club.

5. How to start from scratch.

Seamonsters' members are split between New York and D.C., so Janelle Sterling provided two sets of advice:

Advice for D.C. bands:

1.  Wear scarves, even in the summertime.

2.  Don't imitate bands from New York, you're already six months too late.

3.  Physical copies of music are a thing of the past; post your songs on the Internet for free.

4.  Start an anonymous blog, slag off every band that's hot at the moment for a few weeks, and then post an amazing review of your band.

5.  Make sure your band name is Googleable.

6.  Hipsters are just geeks like you and me; they just make a concerted effort to dress "cool."

Advice for New York bands:

1. The scarf-pea coat combo is not cool.

2. Say where you're actually from.

3. Your bodegas overcharge you for beer.

4. Tight jeans will make you sterile.

5. We're jealous of your bagels.

6. Oy vey.

Darren O'Brien, of New York's Esque, says his town's band could learn from its hosts this weekend:

Something New York bands could probably learn from D.C. folk is to take advantage of the greater metropolitan area. We New Yorkers tend to think that if it's not happening in the Lower East Side or a few neighborhoods in the northwest tip of Brooklyn, it's not happening. But just like some of the best tour shows happen in the middle of nowhere, the outer boroughs and suburbs must have plenty of communities of young hip people hungry for quality entertainment and happy to have a band come to them for once. But I never, ever want to go to those places.

Another member of Esque, Chase Anderson, drops a knowledge bomb on D.C. Take every word to heart:

Things to know about playing in New York:

1. Adapt. Most venues and practice spaces have built-in constraints regarding space, equipment, volume, and time. New York bands are often subject to ridiculous schedules that can change at any moment. Most venues' backlines are iffy at best, and given the difficulty of hauling your own gear to every gig, bands must be able to get through a set with less-than-stellar gear (if the expected gear is even there at all). But drummers definitely have it the worst. On top of the horrible gear you're forced to play at most venues, you have to find creative ways to practice or risk letting your chops go to shit*. The important thing to remember is that the audience doesn't care. They paid money and they're drinking. They want to have a good time. And they don't care that it's not necessarily your fault if you suck.

*A new part of our practice routine is for the four of us to sit around a piano while one person plays. The rest of us sing harmonies or beat on whatever surface makes an interesting noise. I played brush strokes with my hands on the couch cushions yesterday. We've worked out a pretty melancholy version of Steely Dan's "Hey Ninteen," which we plan to record and use for, I don't know, something. It also helps develop skills that can be applied in the rehearsal room and on stage.

2. Network. The city is a stimulating environment, so soak it up. Who knows where your next great idea for a song will come from? Also, everyone in New York says they're important. A few of them actually are. Forward-thinking creative types are usually interested in hanging out with like-minded people. You never know who you'll meet. These pretentious arty-types like yourself love ranting about the newest, greatest thing they've found, especially if no one else knows about it**. We've recently found a sculptor who has given us permission to use his art for all of our upcoming releases. He's also played our upcoming record for some famous friends. I can't name names, but let's just say Schmichard Schmutler of the Schmychedelic Schmurs doesn't hate our new record. Oh man, I'm in trouble. Scmichard Schmutler hates it when you do that.

**Name drop a lot.  (Example:  Alice from Crystal Castles was a total cunt when we played with them. The dudes from HEALTH were pretty cool, though.)

3.  Have a good bullshit detector. Many people who you think could help you are in fact looking for ways that you can help them. It’s OK to be friendly with people like this, as there is an outside chance all their big talk may pay off. Do not trust them wholeheartedly. You're only setting yourself up for heart/headache. Practice your poker face and play most things close to your vest. Success in the music biz is such a craps shoot anyway. There will be plenty of lesser bands who will gain worldwide media attention for no apparent reason (hello, Vivian Girls?) so it's best to just keep going at it however you can.

4. I was going to say something about keeping a positive attitude, but that shit don't fly up here.

DONE & DONE FESTIVAL TAKES PLACE 1:30 p.m. TO 11 P.M. AT ALL SOULS UNITARIAN CHURCH, 2835 16TH ST. NW. $12–$20. 

Area R&B crooner Raheem DeVaughn's new album, The Love and War MasterPeace is out today; we'll have a review from Ben Westhoff in this week's Washington City Paper, and online tomorrow. Till then: The go-go remix of "Bulletproof" featuring TCB is some next-level stuff.

The Pink Line Project shot some video at the massive "G-40: The Summit" exhibition at Art Whino:

After the jump: A certain film critic's fat fucking face, a bitter Munch exhibit, Dan Bejar!

If you haven't read Chris Jones' wonderful Esquire profile of Roger Ebert, do that now. Then read Ebert's response. Then read Will Leitch's piece about his friendship with Ebert, and why he once wrote a piece called "I Am Sick Of Roger Ebert's Fat F—-ing Face." And then watch Ebert on Oprah today.

TV corner! Dustin Hoffman will star in "Luck," a new HBO series. Leno returned to the Tonight Show last night.

A new Edvard Munch retrospective in Paris couldn't get its hands on "The Scream"; the art space, Pinacotheque de Paris, then decided to name the show "Edvard Munch or Anti-Scream." "Privately financed and unashamedly commercial, it’s snubbed by Paris’s curatorial establishment — an attitude Marc Restellini, its director and driving force, reciprocates," writes Bloomberg's Jorg von Uthmann.

Song of the day! Loscil's "The Making of Grief Point," a 9-minute ambient work featuring spoken word from Destroyer's Dan Bejar. Start your day off confused!:

Salome, one of the few metal bands that performed at this year's CMJ.

For D.C. bands, the takeaway from CMJ seems to have been this: It will not pluck you from obscurity, but it can't hurt. Also: Don't believe the hype.

"The myth that you can land the perfect agent or manager at a place like that—I don’t think it pays attention to the reality that you’ve been talking to that person for seven months already,” said Jesse Elliott, whose polymathic alt-country band These United States played a handful of shows during this year's College Music Journal Music Marathon. The annual industry gathering featured over 1,000 artists, close to 100 venues, and around a dozen acts from the D.C. area.

Elliott's got a point: Most of the young bands I heard chatter about during the festival—like Florida's Surfer Blood, New York's Freelance Whales, and London's Golden Silvers and Mumford and Sons—had recording contracts, significant blog buzz, or both going in, not to mention full management teams in place. These are not bands whose success lives or dies according to an industry festival.

"Most of the bands at these festivals are already signed," wrote Todd Hyman, who runs the District-based labels Carpark and Paw Tracks and hosted CMJ showcases for both, in an e-mail. "Though this year there seemed to be a preponderance of unsigned blog bands. Seems folks were complaining about that."

Like many of the D.C. bands who played the festival, Hyman questioned CMJ's usefulness. "CMJ used to be really influential 15-20 years ago," he wrote. "College radio's influence has waned with the rise of the Internet. [Austin's South by Southwest] seems to be the main festival these days. I suppose CMJ benefits college radio music directors the most. And now bloggers." Nevertheless, Hyman's labels have hosted CMJ showcases several times since 2000, and he estimated he's attended the festival 13 times.

When you cast aside the make-you-or-break-you narrative, though, there are subtle benefits to CMJ, bands said. "Though everyone likes to fantasize about big crowds and label offers, I think realistically we just wanted to play for a few new people at a new venue and to add CMJ to our collective resume," wrote Nate Frey, whose band Last Tide played a set at the Brooklyn venue Littlefield, in an e-mail.

The Annandale, Va.-based doom-metal band Salome performed at one of CMJ's only metal showcases, which Relapse Records sponsored. The band signed to Profound Lore Records over the summer, and said it sees CMJ the way most bands do: as an opportunity for exposure. Rob Moore, the group's guitarist, said that performing under the Relapse banner meant a large turnout, and that as much as the music industry has changed in recent years, labels remain important as brands and filters. "If I were just to record something and stick it on the Internet, the chances of somebody hearing it are next to none," Moore said. "So you still need a record label or blogs or Web sites or something to guide your path." CMJ, he said, can connect bands to all those things, even if it may not deliver a recording contract.

Following exposure comes networking. "You’re basically going to meet people and hope something good comes out of it," says Patrick Kigongo, of Ra Ra Rasputin. "As long as bands realize that they’re not going to have some sort of miracle happen to them, they’ll have fun." He said his band—which CMJ initially wait-listed but later asked to a join a showcase—met other artists and a label with whom it may release something soon, not to mention a dubious show promoter who didn't carry business cards.

Elliott, of These United States, said he appreciates CMJ for its more serendipitous possibilities—like meeting a band whose music you admire, or scoring a short write-up on a New York Times blog. These United States also met up with a producer from a studio where it may record its next album, and took some time to check out the space.

Evan Brody, who helps run D.C.'s Underwater Peoples label even though he lives in New Jersey, said someone from the Mexican People Summer label came to one of his showcases, and that he even had a conversation with Ryan Schreiber, the founder of the influential review Web site Pitchfork. And he met some of the bloggers that helped Underwater Peoples become one of this year's most-talked-about petri dishes for young bands. "I think it helped put a lot of faces to a lot of people who I’ve spoken to," he said. "There was a lot of IRLing going on."

Photo courtesy of Salome's MySpace page.

Tittsworth:

-my pack game is so official. you dont wanna see my tour tetris. forreal, i could fit a family of 6 into a fannypack.

-had my 1st facial (cant wait to hear from my mature ass twitter friends' reply). attached suction cups&steam machines to the grill. relaxin!

Travis Morrison:

-Can tell when you aren't playing with your original drummer. Even if he's not that big a fan. Just sayin in case you were gonna get back ...

-Woke up totally nostalgic for the early 80s baltimore orioles and googled lenn sakata.

Beauty Pill (Chad Clark):

-There is a "Halloween store" near my house that offers absolutely no costumes for women that aren't conspicuously sexy. None.

-A 1986(!) Steve Reich interview tape unearthed! Talks about Ghana, Stravinsky, Charlie Parker, Bach. http://bit.ly/x31O5

Last Tide:

-Oh man Pandora, what are you thinking? The "demo" version of Freebird? Freebird without the guitar solo is not Freebird.

Maudlin, noisy, and atmospheric, Last Tide is invested as much in mid-'80s navel-gazing as late-'80s shoegaze. I'm not sure if that makes the young D.C. four-piece kneegaze or thighgaze, but I do know that the group's new EP, The Broken Places, is an engrossing study in dichotomies—the five songs are vociferous yet ebullient, miserable yet poppy, weather-worn yet insistent. The vocals, too, are diametric opposites: Keyboardist Libby Dorot's are delicate, even ethereal—a perfect foil to guitarist Nate Frey's large, searching baritone. Drummer Misha Alexander and bassist Rob Miller complete the group, and City Paper's own Justin Moyer (aka Edie Sedgwick) engineered the recording.

Last Tide drops the EP in physical form in October, but for now, you can hear the whole thing on the group's MySpace (although the version of "A Traitor In My Mind" is actually a shortened "single edit," for those keeping score at home). And you can listen to the band live this weekend on WMUC's Third Rail Radio program, Sunday at 6 p.m. at www.wmucradio.com (or 88.1 on your FM dial).

The group's EP release show is Oct. 26 at the Black Cat Backstage with Austin's Ringo Deathstarr and D.C.'s The State Department. Doors open at 9 p.m.

Lest it be left unsaid: NOMO may make you get down, but they are serious dudes. A glance at bassist Matthew Golombisky, who has f-holes tattooed on his forearms, or baritone saxophonist Dan Bennett, who plays his instrument like he's operating heavy machinery, will tell you exactly that. Not that they're overly studious: These guys are the jazz heads at every music conservatory who'd rather be trading solos with Fela Kuti.

The great Nigerian bandleader's mid-'70s Afrobeat casts a large shadow over NOMO's often electronic take on the genre. The Ann Arbor, Mich., group — currently a sextet led by alto saxophonist Elliot Bergman — played an electrifying, hour-plus set last night at DC9, and it was easy to pick out other influences, too, from fusion-era Miles Davis to the recent ambassadors of Afrobeat coming out of Congo, the Saharan, and Lisbon, Portugal. Everything blended seamlessly but each component remained distinct — less like a melting pot, as Bergman suggested in an interview last year, and more like, say, an overstuffed sandwich.

Drawing largely from its recent albums Ghost Rock and Invisible Cities (parts of both come from the same sessions), NOMO frequently employed tension as the counterpoint to chaos. Several times, the group established a hummable fanfare (the main melody in "Waiting" struck me as a '70s cop-show theme with a steel spine), cooled down for a couple of de rigeur solos, and exploded into a caterwauling, free-jazz-style coda (my thoughts frequently turned to Eric Dolphy).

Programmed beats and thumb pianos (Bergman had three of these) suggested the percussive junkyard-industrial songs of Konono N°1, while guitarist Erik Hall, probably the loosest player of the bunch, channeled the exuberant and fluid Taureg style championed by bands like Group Inerane. Often, when trumpeter Justin Walter found a Latin-sounding melody, and when Bergman used a pair of pedals to produce laser-beam noises, the grimy dance music of Angolan-Portuguese groups like Buraka Som Sistema emerged.

What held it all together, and what makes NOMO sound like NOMO, were the rhythms, all hulking, robotic, and intimidating. As fun as the group is, its music has a weightiness — a heaviness, really — that can defy easy identification, at least until you notice how hard bassist Golombisky and drummer Quin Kirchner are playing. And they had help: When Hall put down his guitar to assist on drums and percussion, polyrhythms practically became omnirhythms. Once or twice, toward the end of the set, Bennett's baritone hovered below the main melody for a moment before erupting into a burplike counter-rhythm. Those in attendance — by the end of the set, many of whom had taken to tables and chairs — didn't stop moving for a second. (During a cover of Sun Ra's kitschy "Rocket No. 9," they even sang along.)

A heaviness, too, lurked beneath the music of the evening's opener, D.C.'s Last Tide. The four-piece's morose, atmospheric pop suggested a love of all things pre- and post-shoegaze, but guitarist Nate Frey's oratorical baritone and bad-weather imagery reminded me more of Swans' dark-hued art pop or Tindersticks' more downcast material than the influences (My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Red House Painters) that Last Tide lists on its MySpace page. Even a cover of Talking Heads' "Memories Can't Wait" — abetted by keyboardist Libby Dorot's spectral backing vocals (she sang lead on several other songs) — was pulsing, ominous, and nearly perfect. The group drops its debut EP in September.

The evening didn't end with an encore, but I doubt anyone in the audience walked away disappointed — not surprising, given that NOMO ended its set by parading onto the venue floor. There, the members eased into a brassy dirge and faded out, surrounded by the crowd's sways and "whoa-oh" chants. Perhaps for a group so propulsive, release only works as a come-down.

Photo courtesy of NOMO's MySpace page