Stealing out of D.C.

With its power lunches, black-tie fund-raisers and country club political culture, Washington, D.C., wouldn’t seem a dance music mecca. The truth is, however, the capital has capital in the world of DJ culture. It is hometown to Grammy-winning remixers Deep Dish, trance pioneer BT, DJ Scott Henry and progressive house producers Saeed & Palash. Oh, and two dapper electronic music producers, Eric Hilton, 36, and Rob Garza, 32, who record under the name Thievery Corporation.

In custom suits fetched from Soho, London, and knocking down cocktails at Hilton’s own Eighteenth Street Lounge, the duo could be mistaken for transplants from the Sunset Strip, TriBeCa or the West End, but the truth is, D.C. is a fitting base for these global beat aficionados. The city draws overseas musical energy like a radio tower in a thunderstorm, and, sonic thieves that they are, Hilton and Garza tap every democratic volt. They are known to comb secondhand record bins for the discarded vinyl collections of international ambassadors gone home.

As the pair set out this fall on a 10-city North American tour (including a stop Friday at the Wiltern Theatre) to support their third album, “The Richest Man in Babylon,” they brought along this sonic heritage and asked several musicians from the CD, including five singers, two percussionists and a sitar player, to join them.

Hilton was hosting warehouse parties with Deep Dish’s Ali “Dubfire” Shirazinia before he met Garza, then an aviation security specialist. The guys bonded over Brazilian tunes and jazz. Soon their Eighteenth Street Lounge Music label was in effect, giving birth to globally flavored e-music such as Nicola Conte’s “Bossa Per Due,” later featured in a commercial for Acura.

Early this year, the pair was tapped to compile the Verve label jazz classics that influenced them most for “Sounds From the Verve Hi-Fi,” a play on Thievery’s acclaimed debut CD, “Sounds From the Thievery Hi-Fi.” On “The Richest Man,” released last month, Hilton and Garza evolve into consuls of soul, dub and spaced-out hip-hop, although some hard-core Thievery fans decry the album’s thin break-beats and live feel. “The bulk of criticism we get from early fans is that we lost our true roots, because the first record was very beat-oriented,” Hilton says.

“That influence is still there, it’s just a lot more subtle,” Garza adds. Indeed, “The Richest Man” is dance music for grown-ups, a 15-course meal featuring live tablas, violin, sitar, conga and waifish vocals that are compressed into a work of digital elegance. The title track takes us to bittersweet Caribbean squalor with Kingston horns and vocals by Notch from Born Jamericans that could be taken as political satire: “There is no guidance in your kingdom / Your wicked walk in Babylon ...”

The disc’s packaging is as understated as the music. An enclosed 48-page booklet features melancholy Third World black-and-white photographs from American Red Cross photojournalist Daniel Sima.

There is no style without substance with Thievery Corporation. The duo is down in the tradition of Motown artists who sported matching custom suits. “It’s a part of being professional,” says Hilton. “Style or clothing -- I don’t think it’s so diametrically opposed to having humanity.”

Or, as the last line on the CD booklet demonstrates, it’s not antithetical to having a message: “Recorded at ESL Studios in Washington, D.C. (the heart of Babylon).”

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Live Thievery

Where: Wiltern Theatre, 3790 Wilshire Blvd.

When: Friday

Cost: $27.50

Info: (213) 380-5005