Photo by Darrow Montgomery

On Labor Day weekend last September, if you stepped outside of the new Korean restaurant or the swank Japanese kitchen at 5th and K streets NW and gazed across the way, you might have caught a scene that felt slightly out of place in shiny, revitalized Mount Vernon Square. Lanterns emerged from inky, overgrown foliage. Guitar squeals careened through the alley. A fire escape that looked like it could collapse any second led beer can-carrying revelers into a disheveled warehouse that appeared it was about to do the same.

But the cookout-cum-DIY show was just one night. The weatherbeaten, blue-and-white structure at 443 I St. NW may be a boho holdout from Mount Vernon Square’s rougher days, but “I don’t think a lot of people know that it’s not just a bunch of kids in the building getting drunk,” says Will Sharp, the 31-year-old creative director of the streetware company Durkl, which resides on Gold Leaf’s first floor.

For well over a decade, Gold Leaf’s 12 studios have housed legion creative types like Sharp. And while Gold Leaf attracted packed crowds and scattered media attention over the years as its art parties grew notorious, its more important legacy is simply as a cheap, spacious place for folks to do their work. “There are happy artists here over 50 that come in at night and paint,” says Sharp. “Artists, welders, sculptors, musicians, and jewelers all under one roof is kind of an oasis for someone like me.”

One of the most accomplished current residents is sculptor Gordon L. Kray, whose Pierre L’Enfant statue resides at Judiciary Square. Visual artists like Josh Cogan, whose studio has housed portrait shoots of Michele Bachmann and Wale, work nearby rehearsal rooms used by indie-rock bands Ra Ra Rasputin and U.S. Royalty. “There was this unspoken creative encouragement that was there the whole time; the moment you stepped into that door, you knew it was the place to be for creation,” says songwriter Ryan McLaughlin, whose folk-punk band Typefighter used the space for much of last year.

All of that will end, along with Gold Leaf’s current lease, on Jan. 31, when artists will have to pack up their supplies and gear. Rumors of the warehouse’s demise have circulated for years, but in 2011, Demers Real Estate, Inc. finally closed a deal with developer Equity Residential. Eventually, this incubator of whatever-goes will make way for much fancier digs, and Mount Vernon Square will be that much less weird.

“I used to look out behind my studio and there was an abandoned lot with abandoned cars,” says Nick Pimentel, a visual artist who worked at Gold Leaf for years. “At night you’d see cars light up, and people smoking crack, and prostitutes. It looked like fireflies with all the lights going on and off. Now you see a Safeway, Busboys & Poets, and a Chipotle.”

—

Nick Pimentel photographs Guy Blakeslee of Entrance and Devendra Banhart at Gold Leaf. Photo courtesy Brendan Hynes.

Gold Leaf’s first indie-rock tenants were Trans Am, the synth-obsessed post-rock group known for their experiments in retro-futurism. Around 1997 or 1998, the trio went looking for a spot to build a recording studio, and came across 443 I Street. The well-known D.C. gallerist George Hemphill had lived and worked there in the ’80s and early ’90s, and Bill Adair’s Gold Leaf frame shop still occupied the bottom floor. “It was like the Trans Am workshop laboratory,” says drummer Sebastien Thomson. “It [was] kind of a dream come true—you wake up, ride your bike down to Chinatown, and you play with your bandmates all day.”

Not long after Trans Am moved in, Adair moved his shop to Dupont Circle, though the name Gold Leaf stuck. In 1998, sculptor Mike Abrams took over much of the site. “My inspiration was like, Andy Warhol had his space, and it’s inspiring to have artists working together,” he says. While working on his own art and teaching classes, Abrams built out the other studios and began subletting them to a diverse crowd of artists. “I could point to every room in the building and say this one’s a business, this one does video editing, this one’s a sculpture fabrication shop,” he says.

Pimentel was one of the first people to rent from Abrams. True to the dynamic nature of the space, Pimentel not only painted and silkscreened there, but also hosted shows. The Hosiery, as his chunk of Gold Leaf was called, put on off-the-grid concerts by indie-rock heavies like !!!, No Age, the Thievery Corporation side-project Dust Galaxy, and Devandra Banhart. That tradition continued when group Fffever moved in later in the 2000s. “They basically would practice, record, hang out, and throw events there,” says Sharp. “They did it all themselves, regardless of what people said to them about it being illegal or not being up to code. It was refreshing; they re-energized that place.” That part of the building later went to the fractured blues-rock trio Laughing Man, who began calling it Red Door. Some of the shows they booked over the last two years even took a turn for the almost-mainstream: A series of Jazz Loft performances eventually got a stamp of approval from the D.C. Jazz Festival.

“I tried to nurture the spot as much as I could with open door policies, and let people come and play music if they wanted to,” says Laughing Man’s Brandon Moses. “People could come in and rehearse if they wanted to. Bands could rent space for long or short periods of time or for free.”

If the vibes were mostly chill, that didn’t keep the authorities from getting suspicious. “Two 40-year-old dudes in leather jackets, gold chains, and crew cuts came in asking if there’s any alcohol sold in our space,” says Moses. If that wasn’t obvious enough, the two undercover officers then gave “the third degree to some kid who brought a beer from Safeway.” Of course, the hosts were only asking for donations and didn’t sell alcohol, so they never got into much trouble. “They basically came in, stood around, listened to a band, and left,” said Moses.

Of course, Gold Leaf saw plenty of wild moments. Aside from the occasional party that spilled into the street, Abrams recalls one well-lit evening when “I was cruising down the street and thought, ‘Oh cool, fireworks.’ Then I realized, ‘Wait, those are coming from the roof of I Street.’” He made his way there to find police circled around the building but unsure how to get in, exclaiming, “We need to talk to those guys!” But generally, Abrams says the police were kind. They might show up to a party, but they would rarely shut it down. “What they don’t know about is the afterparty,” Abrams says.

—

This time, Gold Leaf is shutting down for real. Last May, Demers Real Estate brokered a sale of the space to Equity Residential, which plans to build apartments. Some bands, like Laughing Man, have already had to vacate. The lease for the rest of the building ends on Jan. 31, and in the meantime there are a number of farewell shows slated.

“I don’t think there is anything like it in D.C. It was a unique place, and was as fertile as the ground gets in a city like D.C., where there are more art bureaucrats than artists,” says Cogan. It certainly won’t be easy to replicate a situation like 443, and Pimentel doesn’t see a similar spot opening anytime soon. “I don’t see it being possible for a bunch of artists to find a big enough building in D.C. proper to do this...rent prices have gone up so much.”

Some of the musicians interviewed for this article said they were looking into new practice spaces in town; some of the artists talked about looking for space in the suburbs, perhaps in Hyattsville’s growing arts district. A few said they’re considering moving to towns like Philadelphia, where more mixed-use spaces exist.

That sort of warehouse-style workspace is rare in D.C., though. This week, another longtime artists warehouse, 52 O Street Studios, let some of its residents know they may have to vacate their live-work spaces later this year. (The owner is planning to build a hostel.) On H Street NE, a building of workspace backed by Thievery Corporation’s Eric Hilton only lasted a month or so last year.

There are new live-work spaces for artists in NoMa and Brookland, but they’re not that cheap, and come with narrow income requirements. Another new development in Brookland will include some artist studios, and Dangerously Delicious Pies, a shop on H Street NE, is converting some rooms into rehearsal spaces for bands. The market for cheap workspace is dynamic in D.C., but you could hardly call it abundant.

Not everyone is feeling bleak. “I don’t feel like it’s the end of the earth, I just feel like it’s a new beginning,” says Abrams. “What I’d really like to see is the developer currently doing I Street step up and say, ‘Hey, we’re taking over your old building, but we’re going to give you some space out of this because we can be helpful, and you can be helpful to us.’” His overtures to Gold Leaf’s new handlers haven’t been returned, however.

For his part, Moses isn’t too worried. After spending so much time at Gold Leaf over the past three years, he says, “That sense of community, that sense of having useful spaces that function for the purposes of artists, that’s gotten a hold on people enough that either separately or collectively, these types of collectives will get created.”

ESL Radio is so chill.

You've got a few more workday listening options, beginning this month. ESL Music, the label owned by local chill purveyors Thievery Corporation, launched an online radio station today, and it is so, so, so chill. How chill? So chill it's been playing the same chill loop—glossy keys, crowd noise, Rasta-voiced hypeman—since I tuned in like 30 minutes ago. Which I suppose makes it solid mood music for your mid-afternoon energy dip!

Scoutmob, that moustachioed alternative to deal services like LivingSocial, launched a D.C. music podcast today, starring Tina Seamonster (who's involved in City Paper's Crafty Bastards fair) and Marcus K. Dowling (who's a contributor to this blog). They played a handful of tracks covering their quite different tastes in music—Tuscadero, Wale, Wild Flag, and Dave Nada—and discussed why they chose them. Bonus: When explaining the origin of moombahton, Dowling does a pretty nifty vocal imitation of Dutch house.

Last month saw the launch of another local music stream, Hometown Sounds, which cycles through a number of formats throughout the day. (Right now, it's Nation of Ulysses, as part of its 2 to 4 p.m. punk-rock block.) And venerable go-go resource Take Me Out to the Go-Go launched its own online radio station on New Year's Day—which sounds great, although the ID3 tags are kind of a mess.

Here's that Scoutmob podcast:

Scoutmob DC What's the Deal Radio 01 by Scoutmob

MUSIC

Thievery Corporation! The homegrown masters of pseudo-worldly electronic chill play three nights at 9:30 Club—but they're all sold out.

Best highbrow option: Pierre de Gaillande and his band perform the songs of the great French poet and singer Georges Brassens. Free at Millennium Stage.

ART

Big-deal cut-out artist Kara Walker discusses Andy Warhol and considers his "Shadows" paintings at the Hirshhorn. Free. 7 p.m.

Thievery Corporation: mere stewards of democracy

In case you didn't get the memo, Thievery Corporation is down with the people.

The latest single from U Street NW restauranteur/nightlife don Eric Hilton's lyte-funk ensemble is called "Unified Tribes," and it self-awards Thievery Corporation yet another badge of authenticity, this time derived from the Occupy movement. The accompanying video shows agile MC Mr. Lif maneuvering between tents in McPherson Square, rhyming about demonstrations nationwide, something about beauty and/or light, spiritual heights, and, er, um, well, it's a soup, of sorts. A gumbo. Of righteousness.

Hey, but that bass line is totally funky, right?

About the track, Hilton says "We’ve been so fortunate to link up with Mr. Lif...He has a revolutionary spirit in the purest, most humane sense; and the world needs more of his conscious approach to hip-hop." (T. Corp. is also co-producing Lif's upcoming album, scheduled to be released on the group's ESL label in 2012.) ESL's website calls the song "another sonic Molotov aimed straight at the belly of the beast." A Molotov, yes! Or, maybe something a little less scary. Like a fluffy pillow. And after we're done tackling all this toxic greed and corruption, I could really use a $14 cocktail. Man, where could I get one of those right now?

Watch the video below.

Thievery Corporation: Simply the best.

In what was possibly the most glorious landslide victory of all time, Thievery Corporation was voted Best Local Band in Express Night Out's 2011 reader's poll. (Wale came in second; U.S. Royalty, third.)

Here's what else the left-field, utterly unpredictable readers of Express Night Out deemed No. 1:

Best venue: 9:30 Club

Best sports bar and best gay bar: Nellie's Sports Bar

Best amateur sports league: Happy Hour Kickball

Best film festival: Screen on the Green

Best cupcake: Georgetown Cupcake

Congratulations, Thievery Corporation, for being the Georgetown Cupcake of D.C. music.

They were looking at him, of course, but in video form, projected onto a wall, dragging pieces of timber across a field. The room smelled like wood.

Yet against the wall facing the window, there was the real-life Lawrence, helmet strapped to his head, timber strapped to his back, his feet moving on a treadmill. He stared forward, impassively, with Ken-doll composure. If it was freaking people out, they played it off by staring at anything but him. Which meant him. As video art. Inches from the real him.

This was in the hotel room booked by D.C.'s Heiner Contemporary Art, one of dozens of galleries lining the second and third floor of the chic Morris Lapidus–designed Capitol Skyline. There's more art filling rooms off of the first-floor lobby, and below that, in the parking garage, more galleries and unrepresented artists still. When the fair announced its lineup in August, I was disappointed to see it tilt so heavily toward local names, with just a smattering of international participants. But you had to admit last night: (e)merge has come together quite slickly.

The parking-garage is the fair's more playful half: There's a hefty plot curated by street-art purveyor Art Whino, and the dominant theme therein seems to be...pandas. And not far from there, fair-goers can hop on a shaking chicken or beef cut, just like one of those quarter rides you see in shopping malls. Upstairs, some galleries used their hotel rooms imaginatively, and others employed them like typical, if tiny, white cubes.

I didn't linger long in either area—the booze lines were long outside, and the band was about to go on. In front of me, a well-dressed old woman with blue hair ordered a vodka and sugar-free Red Bull.

LouLou and the Disappointer Sisters is a four-piece, assembled for the occasion, featuring the eponymous singer from Thievery Corporation as well as Fugazi fifth man Jerry Busher on drums. Often, songs began with harsh, Tangerine Dream-like intros before blossoming into spiky yeh-yeh grooves, with Loulou Ghelichkhani singing in French. Like Thievery Corporation, this was mood music: Weird, catchy, and in this case evoking art-world cool. I'd love to hear a recording.

I left around 10 p.m., right around when the fete was really getting started. Some folks had just invaded the pool. That's all you can really ask of a Capitol Skyline party.

(e)merge runs all weekend at Capitol Skyline. There's also a free shuttle between (e)merge, But Is It Art?, and The Fridge gallery. We'll have more—from actual art critics!—all weekend on Arts Desk.

Photo by Matt Dunn

Imaginative local duo Bluebrain is gearing up to host a benefit for the new artist space located at 1337 H Street NE.

The 7900 square-foot space, located between the H Street Country Club and Dangerously Delicious Pies, was formerly occupied by American West Indian Auto Body. The building is owned by none other than restaurant owner and Thievery Corporation member Eric Hilton, who will also open a bar/dining establishment in the space's basement. Adrian Parsons and Volta Bureau are among the artists who will inhabit the building's creative work space upstairs.

At the September 9th and 10th benefits, each of the venue's 11 rooms will be outfitted with speakers and subwoofers, all playing music by Ally Behnke, Forgetting, Laughing Man, AAA, and Volta Bureau. Bluebrain's Hays Holladay says that the event will take the form of  "an installation mixing sound and music, where sound moves with you through space." Bluebrain won't perform, but Holladay and brother/bandmate Ryan will be behind the board, so to speak, programming what's being called a "sound experience."

The benefit is "one of many openings for the space," says Holladay, who credits Parsons and Hilton with the venue's quick transformation.

Reservations for Bluebrain's "Living House" are now closed, but more information can be found on 1337 H Street's Tumblr account.

Correction: The original version of this post inaccurately said that Ally Behnke, Forgetting, Laughing Man, AAA, and Volta Bureau would perform at this show. It has been updated to reflect that these are not live performances.

In the 1990s, Thievery Corporation did not want to be a D.C. band.

“We are jet-setters,” Eric Hilton told Washington City Paper in a 1999 cover story. Hilton and his creative partner, Rob Garza, liked to wear suits. “In a suit, you can go anyplace,” said Hilton. “We’re living in a global marketplace.” Above all, it seemed, the downtempo group yearned to be suave international superstars.

That was four years after the opening of Eighteenth Street Lounge, the Dupont nightspot co-owned by Hilton that blazed the way for the clutch of stylish restaurants and bars in which he later invested—Dragonfly, Local 16, Marvin, American Ice Company, Patty Boom Boom, U Street Music Hall, and a trio of nightspots with Anglophilic, semi-rhyming names: Gibson, Dickson, and not-yet-opened Brixton. For a guy with worldwide aspirations, he sure put down local roots.

More than a decade after the City Paper story, Hilton has helped build the chic environment Thievery desired—a moneyed, cosmopolitan city where faux-hawked artists perch on the same bar stools as cufflinked lobbyists. Simultaneously, they’ve grown their music empire. Last year, the band sold out five consecutive dates at the 9:30 Club; the group’s homegrown label, ESL Music, now flaunts a classy, multinational roster; and Hilton’s establishments have helped redefine nightlife on U Street NW. Twelve years ago, the duo had almost given up on selling their records in D.C. Now, D.C. is their castle, and they should be kings.

Instead, they sound more homeless than ever. Their sixth studio album, Culture of Fear, isn’t roaming the world, like previous Thievery full-lengths. It’s just lost.

In a sense, it fails in the same manner in which past Thievery albums have failed. It’s boring. Rudderless. Refined, but anesthetic. And unconvincing, because it’s apparent that despite their long-term commitment to chill music, these guys probably don’t just get into the studio, light up a spliff, and let the vibes flow. No, there’s a regimen. You can’t build the chill empire by being chill. To build the chill empire, you show up every day 10 minutes early and do your job. In a suit.

The best track is a vintage-tinged ambient number—the slinky “Light Flares” sounds like a Stereolab take on the La Planète Sauvage soundtrack—but other songs emit only a faint plume of joie de vivre that evaporates quickly. Most of the album attempts bead-curtain atmospherics, and winds up somewhere between plodding and comatose. There are zero jams. Gone are the high-profile guest stars of The Cosmic Game, the multilingual acrobatics of The Richest Man in Babylon, and, most surprisingly, the group’s trademark sitar. It’s kind of shocking to hear Thievery without that instrument, actually, despite all the criticisms lobbed against the band’s cloying, Putumayo-grade multiculturalism over the years.

The absence of bright, acoustic elements makes Culture of Fear even lonelier. It cuts back on dub-reggae influences—the patois-fluent Steele brothers, known as See-I, are nowhere to be found—and doubles down on feminine cooing. With their airy sweetness, LouLou Ghelichkhani and newcomer Kota float, whisper, and linger with the complexity of an inexpensive Chardonnay. “Take my soul,” Ghelichkhani sings, on the track of the same name. “I don’t need it anymore.” Oh, how you do.

Where the album isn’t weakened by soullessness, it sags under the weight of George W. Bush-era paranoia. On its cover, a creepy surveillance camera is turned toward the world. “All that they weave/is a web of deceit,” belts Tamara Wellons—the lone strong voice on the record—over a funk riff that disappears into a gas cloud. On the title track, rapper Mr. Lif opens, “Seems to me like they want us to be afraid, man. Or maybe we just like being afraid.” Thievery has long peddled undercooked lefty politics, but here they sound late to the table, too.

LISTEN: Thievery Corporation – "Culture of Fear"

That, or the group has sunk into a quicksand of bizarre politico-mysticism. Hilton made his directorial debut last year with Babylon Central, a film that was, by most accounts, ridiculous. Set here, the film fetishized D.C. as a cradle of multinational evil; the protagonist was, naturally, a Vespa-riding DJ. The film’s synopsis: “When he fails to deliver an important package for his boss…Seb finds himself an unwitting participant in an economic power-play with a Saudi Prince as the Saudi government attempts to divest from the US dollar. As Seb begins to fall for the Prince’s daughter, his friends are dragged into the conflict. Throughout his struggle, the dark powers that operate in Washington, DC (modern-day Babylon) are revealed, and the Achilles heel of the US Empire is exposed.”

What the fuck?

Babylon Central seems light years away from the beautiful D.C. we saw in the video for “The Numbers Game,” the strong, funky cut from 2008’s Radio Retaliation, with guest vocalist Chuck Brown. In it, the go-go godfather was the star—Garza and Hilton just drove the sweet Caddy that escorted him through Southeast. Brown hung at a barbecue, shook hands, posed for photos, and basked in a happy, communal glow. On Culture of Fear, Garza—who moved to California last year—and Hilton have misplaced that spirit entirely. Lost in a placeless haze with no clear destination, Thievery Corporation needs to find a home.

—

“This is the real See-I sound,” announces the first track on See-I’s debut LP—and it’s a wonder we’re just hearing it. After two decades performing inside and outside the Eighteenth Street Lounge incubator, the duo is overdue for a proper album. It’s a dynamic release that struts with the confidence of experience.

Outside D.C., reggae vocalists Archie “Zeebo” Steele and Arthur “Rootz” Steele are probably best known as veteran Thievery Corporation collaborators. The brothers’ job, it seems, is to make Thievery Corporation more interesting. Zeebo’s toasting breathed life into “38.45,” the still-beloved drum and bass cut from the group’s 1997 debut; in concert, Rootz and Zee are the stars of Thievery’s gigs. But in D.C., See-I is the star of its own show.

If you’ve seen the band live (it’s not hard—they play often), you should know what you’re in for on this disc: roots reggae raised on rock and funk. Smooth, bottom-heavy, and ominous, “Dangerous ” carries a sweet melody on top of a deep groove; “Dub Revolution,” probably a reference to dub pioneer Lee “Scratch” Perry, is a catchy tribute to the soul and dub reggae roots See-I sprouts from. The D.C.-repping “Homegrown” —one of See-I’s most raucous live songs—starts out sounding like Funkadelic, then just becomes Funkadelic: One of its refrains is cribbed from “Standing on the Verge of Getting It On.” “Haterz 24-7,” a pretty standard haters-gonna-hate track, also doesn’t win points for originality, but is propelled by the brothers' charismatic, easy synergy. Zeebo is the cool toaster, Rootz the sweet crooner. It’s an appealing dynamic they have honed since childhood.

The album unravels toward the end; none of its trippy, space-traveling material is particularly memorable. But at its most focused and energetic, See-I seals its reputation a versatile and magnetic party band. It’s too bad they’re missing from the latest Thievery record. Culture of Fear could use the adrenaline shot.

Illustration by Brooke Hatfield

They moved in at the beginning of March. Then, on March 11, the earthquake hit off the coast of northeastern Japan, followed by the tsunami that took more than 13,000 lives. Then came the problems at the nuclear plants.

They could feel radiation in the rain, they say, and on their skin. “We were really conscious about the water,” says Kashiwara. “The water tasted really bad just after the earthquake. It tasted like medicine. I couldn’t get rid of it. I didn’t want to stay there.”

On top of their fear of radiation, The Nobis’ Tokyo gigs were canceled, but they found out they were booked for a stateside show. They traveled to New York and then D.C., where several degrees of hemp connections put them in touch with Ben Droz, 24, a wiry nightlife photographer who by day lobbies for an industrial hemp advocacy group. The Nobis decided to stay, and Droz introduced them to his friends at Moishe House. The Adams Morgan group house for Jewish young adults had an open room.

And that’s how on this day, Kashiwara came to be in Moishe House’s shared kitchen, standing at a small stove. She’s reheating some udon she and MP made the night before as part of a workshop for some 25 guests. She and MP are also preparing some radish sushi, and a stew with mushrooms, kombu (a seaweed-like sea vegetable), and dried bonito. They bought the ingredients at Hana Japanese Market on 17th Street NW, a grocery store-cum-travel agency that has a sign advertising space travel.

The Nobis are planning to relaunch their career in D.C., but they’ve also been doing a lot of cooking. Says Eli Wald, 26, a Moishe House resident who works for a Jewish advocacy organization: “We hadn’t had shrimp in the house before.”

—

It’s not just food they’re sharing. The Nobis and their hosts have also been looking at the godlier things they have in common.

“We’ve been talking about Hebrew. How it’s related to Japan. Every time we go to temples we find lots of Hebrew stuff,” says Kashiwara, adding that she and MP “believe in bits of this and that”—including some Shintoism, a touch of Judaism, and “the Christian God, too.”

“I’ve always thought there were inherent similarities between Judaism and Japanese culture,” says Droz. “They both go back longer than anything else that I know about. I’m sure there’s books on the overlap. It’s amazing that we both could inherently feel it and that they somehow ended up here. There’s a cosmic bond.”

“We feel really safe,” says Kashiwara, bringing to the table a pot of tea, bowls of soup, and trays of sushi and rolls made with walnuts and raisins, sprinkled with hemp seeds. “Itadakimas,” she says, sitting. In front of her is a tea mug with a dreidel on it. “When you eat or drink you say ‘Itadakimas.’ It means I am grateful for the food I am gonna be eating.”

“In Hebrew you say ‘B’tayavon,’” Wald says.

“It sounds French,” Kashiwara says.

Kashiwara says that she and MP might visit a friend in Virginia who has a winery, so that they can be closer to nature. Wald suggests they go live on a kibbutz. He mentions that the house is thinking of holding a Japanese-style Shabbat dinner soon, perhaps in the first week of May—though he isn’t quite sure what that means. (Moishe House is an international organization, and residents of its houses hold regular events.)

“The first week of May is also Hemp History Month,” Droz says. “Maybe we should make it a hempy Shabbat. We could talk about how in Japanese culture, hemp has a very long history. Hemp was used in the shrines. It was also used in ceremonial garb. And in Hebrew, the holy anointing oil has something that many people say is clearly cannabis oil.”

“Many people don’t. We’re going to have a Torah-off,” says Wald, who goes upstairs to retrieve his bible.

Kashiwara explains that she and MP—who plays guitar, synth, percussion, and a Kaoss Pad—have been collaborating for six years. Kashiwara sings and plays keyboard, synth, and percussion. In fact, she is contractually obligated to keep doing so—when she joined the band, MP had her sign a contract stating that in order for her to leave the group, she’d have to find a replacement. Kashiwara plans to keep singing, and she and MP hope to get married sometime this year.

Wald, returned from upstairs, says that his father also makes contracts—Jewish wedding contracts called ketubahs. He opens his bible to the story of Genesis, explaining it to Kashiwara and MP. Then comes the story of Noah and the ark, which has surely taken on new resonance after the tsunami. While explaining the story of Moses and his years in exile—again, it seems almost too on the nose—he finds Exodus 30:23, the passage with the supposed reference to cannabis being an ingredient in an anointment mixture.

“It says it’s cassia,” Wald says.

“I don’t even know what cassia is,” Droz says, looking at Wikipedia on his iPhone.

“It says cinnamon. Pure myrrh. Cassia. And a hint of olive oil,” says Wald.

Droz says, “It’s still up for debate.”

“Not by serious linguists,” Wald says.

“I want to make a song called ‘Moishe House,’” MP says, looking at the two of them. “A whole album.”

—

MP says he misses the food, the water, and the culture of Japan, but that he and Kashiwara are planning to stay in the United States. They say they won’t go back to Japan until they’re sure any babies they have will be safe. But since Kashiwara and MP don’t trust government reports about nuclear safety, that could be never.

What The Nobis want for now is to make music, perform music, and be musicians in D.C., or anywhere else they can get gigs. They played a show at the Lamont Bishop Gallery, and have a handful of other gigs lined up—a fundraiser for Japan at Moishe House on April 16, a “420 show” at the Montserrat House on April 20, and a show on April 29 at the bar Toyland—and have been networking with people like Thievery Corporation, whom they were introduced to by Adam Eidinger, the owner of Capitol Hemp (who calls Kashimara and MP “genuine Japanese hempsters” and says he considers them to be nuclear refugees).

“God comes into her body when she performs,” MP says of Kashiwara. He calls their music “paper pop”—it’s light and a bit blissed out, being mostly concerned with love and happiness. The band name—The Nobis—even comes from a Latin word meaning “there’ll be no one as happy as us,” or “the world belongs to us,” Kashiwara explains.

But MP and Kashiwara are also having to rethink their music a little bit. They are, after all, an electronic band that was driven from its home country by fear of an electricity source. They’d like to buy a van and cover it in solar panels, and travel around the country performing, also using the solar panels to power their instruments.

“The problem is that solar panels are really expensive,” MP says.

Kashiwara, the optimist, is still new to town, and hasn’t quite taken measure of Washington, D.C., circa 2011. “I’m sure the government has enough money to place solar panels for everybody,” she says.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Festival director Kendra Rubinfeld said she founded it to show that Washington is "more than monuments, politics, and traffic," and many of the festival's short titles are much more intimate than our typical beltway milieu. The glaring exception is the festival's closer: a screening of the second-season premiere of DC Cupcakes. Sophie LaMontagne and Katherine Kallinis might be local, but their tony slice of Wisconsin Avenue is about as distant from Yachad's charitable mission as possible.

About two-thirds of Our City Film Festival—of which the City Paper is a sponsor—shows heart-tugging documentaries celebrating city residents an organizations doing heart-tugging good works. First are a pair of uncompleted films. She's a Sensei profiles Carol Middleton, a transplant from the Midwest with a seventh-degree black belt in tae kwon do who runs a martial arts school in Mt. Pleasant, and Letting in the Jungle looks at the wildlife running through our neighborhoods.

The intersection of concrete and nature is also at the center of Community Harvest, the festival's pre-selected Best Documentary about the development of an urban public garden on a disused Columbia Heights lot.

Other short docs playing include Touch, Pause, Engage, showing off the rugby team at the Hyde Public Leadership Charter School, the country's first all-black high-school squad; and Equilibrium City, which tells the development of Columbia, Md. through the memories of Michael Chabon and other natives of the planned community.

Of the four narrative shorts playing at Our City Film Festival, the organizers elected to name Audiofiles as their favorite. The romantic comedy about misplaced iPods features a soundtrack full of angsty ballads by Daddy Lion and those problematic Metrorail doors. Quicker laughs are found in Tiebreaker, in which a pair of roommates actively seek a third wheel to settle their disputes.

Mark Pagan, the director of the intimate, quiet Raymond and Lina, wants to grow his 11-minute drama in to a feature—the grandfather-granddaughter relationship of the title characters is easy to miss. But he novelty of Pagan's film is in its near-silent first six minutes. The first half of the story cuts between scenes of Raymond milling about his neighborhood and Lina at a city playground, though the only sound comes from the background.

Our City's feature presentation is Eric Hilton's Babylon Central. The synopsis provided to critics includes mentions of a mail courier-cum-DJ, a Saudi prince, global currency markets, and an imperialistic vision of the U.S. government; the film is a hodgepodge of shaky camerawork and near-forgotten lines with a soundtrack of Thievery Corporation at its most exaggerated sense of political indignation. OK, Hilton, we get it. You didn't like George W. Bush, but Babylon Central is insufferable and Tommy Wiseau's The Room already has a standing appointment at midnight screenings.

Sunday, Feb. 13. Goethe-Institut, 812 7th Street NW. (202) 296-8563. $10/screening. Click here for tickets and times.