After fronting two critically acclaimed and commercially successful musical projects, one might assume South Bay native Eric Victorino would be comfortable on stage and confident in his own skin. But that’s not always the case.

In fact, right up until moment he went on stage for the first solo performance of his career, Victorino says he was terrified.

“It was scary up until the second it started,” he says of his recent appearance at PopScene—the weekly indie dance music party hosted by Live 105’s program director and DJ, Aaron Axelsen.

Furthermore, he adds, he can only really point to one consistent lyrical theme on his forthcoming solo debut.

“It’s this feeling of doubt,” he says of the songs on the soon-to-be released Wake Up, I Miss You. “This is my first opportunity to really be blatant about the doubts that I have in myself and my place in the world, and maybe the doubts I have about certain people in my life.”

Victorino says that there are days when he has doubts about making music, and at times he can’t decide whether he wants to play with live instruments or use a computer to program beats. “Music is such a weird thing for me,” he says. “But it’s something that I feel I need to keep doing.”

Yet Victorino is much more than a pensive and brooding artist wracked by doubt. He is also an explosive performer with the ability to control a room with his voice and his magnetic stage presence—and when he’s not second-guessing himself, he can be brimming with confidence.

“Right off the bat I felt really comfortable and felt like this is what I should be doing for this particular project,” he says of taking the stage at PopScene on Sept. 2. “It was just me. It was the first time I’ve ever done that—been on stage by myself. And it was cool.”

For the very first time, Victorino explains, he had no one else to let down—no band member or musical collaborator—and that feeling, he says, has been freeing.

“For the first time in my life, I don’t give a fuck if anybody likes this album,” the singer says of Wake Up, I Miss You. “I’ve never had that feeling before.”

Listening to Victorino’s new material, one gets the sense he is telling the truth. It’s clear that the songs on Wake Up are coming from a very personal place.

“Well at least I’ve had a woman,” he sings in a low, trembling, almost-whisper on “Prophecy.” “Well at least I’ve had someone. Well at least I’ve had a moment in the sun.”

If there is a theme that unifies the music itself on Wake Up it is simplicity. “Prophecy” plods along over a minimalist keyboard arpeggio and a spare kick and snare drum machine beat.

As he tells it, some of the songs on this record were laid down using his smartphone. At first, Victorino says, he intended that the clips would merely serve as demos, but now he says he likes the bare-bones feel of some of these takes so much he is sure some of them will end up making the final cut—even if it isn’t anywhere near as polished as much of what he did with Strata and The Limousines.

“I don’t care if this is looked at as a collection of demos,” he says, explaining that his choice to go with rawer takes is related to his decision to perform under his given name.

“I’ve never really realized what naming a project does, aside from the obvious—it’s kind of a marketing tool,” he says, cracking wise about a certain well-known New York death metal act: “As a listener, you have a good idea that ‘Cannibal Corpse’ is going to sound a certain kind of way.”

Ultimately, he says, performing and recording as Eric Victorino means he can be as true to himself as possible.

“It’s the one thing I won’t change,” he says of the words printed on his birth certificate. “I’m not going to get tired of my own name, I don’t think. I hope not.”

Victorino opens for Shonen Knife at The Ritz during October’s C2SV music and technology festival.

Eric Victorino
Oct 7, 8pm, $15-$18
The Ritz, San Jose

The Annex in Menlo Park was doing about as well as any recording studio could hope to do. Throughout the aughts, or post-Napster years, everyone in the recording industry—from the labels and musicians to producers and engineers—had to innovate to survive. Compared to many others, The Annex had equipped itself well for the changing times.

“The main point of that studio was to be as diverse as possible, to be able to handle any project that came its way,” says Ryan Perras, a recording engineer at The Annex from 2008-2012.

He isn’t exaggerating. In addition to banda, rock and hip-hop, The Annex branched out into other areas of recording, like voiceover work for film, TV, video games and, increasingly, apps. It became the go-to spot for local athletes to record radio ads. Willie Mays, Jerry Rice and Ronnie Lott all came to record audio tracks for projects that they were working on—Mays for an audiobook, Rice for some green-screen filming and Lott to overdub some lines for an episode of One Tree Hill. Michael J. Fox came to voiceover an ABC special. Alan Parsons came to Studio A specifically to film its equipment (more specifically, its much-coveted Neve III console) for an instructional video about sound engineering. When Buffalo Springfield reunited for the 2010 Bridge School Benefit, Neil Young and crew practiced in Studio D.

And though record sales had dropped years earlier, plenty of musicians were booking time at The Annex. Over the years, countless bands from the Bay Area and beyond had come to record in one of its five different live rooms. Los Tigres Del Norte, the biggest band ever to come from San Jose (and one of the largest bands in the Spanish-speaking world), recorded almost every one of their albums at The Annex, starting before the building had even formally been named.

Since opening in 1975, The Annex rolled with the punches, expertly regrouping with the shifting record industry along the way.

And then Mark Zuckerberg went and ruined everything.

“Facebook moved literally down the street and that made everything crazy in that neighborhood,” says Perras. “It was depressing.”

Perras now runs his own studio, District Recording, in San Jose’s Sunol-Midtown neighborhood. District is an impressive studio that many in San Jose don’t even know is here. Asian Man Records (one of the precious few nationally recognized success stories of South Bay music) has utilized the studio for a number of projects.

Ryan Perras behind the soundboard at District Recordings in San Jose. Photo by Geoffrey Smith II.

Russell Bond, The Annex’s studio manager from 1975 until it closed in 2012, confirmed Perras’ take. After the social media giant moved into the former Sun Microsystems campus, a group of young real estate developers made incredibly high offers for a number of buildings on the street, including The Annex.

“Our landlord was made an offer she couldn’t refuse,” he says by email. It was a direct result of what he saw as “Facebook investing quite a bit of ‘improvement’ dollars into the area.”

“Improvement,” in this context, is a questionable word. By all accounts, The Annex was doing well for itself when the building sold. All five of its studios were booked a solid eight weeks out. And yet, when the landlord sold the building, they were given only six weeks to complete all business, strip it entirely and leave.

“No amount of pleading worked,” Bond says. “Nearly 40 years of collecting and storing media, machines and office stuff, enough to fill five studios in 16,000 square feet of space had to be moved. It was chaos.”

A massive soundboard in one of five of The Annex’s recording studios.

Before giving in to the coming tide, The Annex made an effort to raise enough money for a counterbid on the building. “A grassroots effort via a group of friends, clients and peers,” Bond says. All of them would have had partial ownership of the studio, had they been able to outbid the developers. The effort was within a few hundred thousand dollars of the goal when it became clear that they had to shift focus from fundraising to moving out.

In May 2012, after serving the Bay Area music scene for almost 40 years, The Annex went silent.

***

But if history has proven anything, it’s that all truly dedicated artists never stop creating, even when they’re on the down and out. In the same way that some of Silicon Valley’s most successful makers have embraced the principle of “failing upward,” so it goes with many of this region’s most gifted musicians. Whether it’s sleeping in their practice spaces, crashing on couches while on tour, or working shitty minimum-wage jobs to keep their gear up and running, musicians find a way.

That’s what Jack Shirley did when he opened his recording studio in the former murder capital of the U.S. with an economy computer and tiny soundboard designed for bedroom recording hobbyists—and then proceeded to produce one of the most critically acclaimed metal albums of 2013.

Tracked in just 10 days at the beginning of 2013, and released the same year, Sunbather, by San Francisco black metal band Deafheaven would go on to be hailed as a genre-redefining work. In their 4.5/5 star review of the album, All Music Guide wrote: “Many bands go through their entire career without making an album as well crafted, fully realized and downright gorgeous as Sunbather.” Rolling Stone listed it as the best metal album of the year, calling it “a mind-blower,” and it placed higher on Pitchfork’s best-of-2013 list than Justin Timberlake, MIA, Drake, Neko Case, Run the Jewels, Arcade Fire and even Daft Punk, whose “Get Lucky” charted as the No. 2 single of the year.

To record Random Access Memories, Daft Punk worked with two producers in the legendary Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles. To make Reflektor, Arcade Fire began recording in Louisiana, spent a month recording in Jamaica, workshopped the songs with LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy back in Montreal, and then did more recording at Murphy’s DFA Studios in Manhattan.

Sunbather, on the other hand, was recorded out of a modest studio, hidden in a dead-end street between a boxing gym and an auto body shop in East Palo Alto.

“Just because it’s a high-end place, or they look professional, doesn’t mean you’re going to see eye-to-eye, or that they’re gonna, like, do a good job,” says Jack Shirley, owner of and sole producer at EPA’s Atomic Garden studio.

At this point, the Atomic Garden should be a household name for anyone interested in Bay Area music, or underground rock music in general. Shirley has recorded and produced not only the Bay Area’s brightest—musicians like Tony Molina, and Void Boys—but also some of the most influential metal bands from here to Europe. Jamaican reggae stars Black Uhuru recorded with him. And a number of records he’s produced have even landed on the American Billboard charts.

Shirley has managed to build a staggering resume as a producer from less than auspicious beginnings. He began his career as a record producer while also juggling art school, working at a BMW dealership and recording bands out of his parents’ house in San Carlos for $20 an hour.

“There was one semester where I was working 30 hours a week, going to school 30 hours a week, and then recording like 20 hours a week on the weekend,” he recalls. At the end of that semester he quit his job at the BMW dealership. Shortly after graduating college, he moved into the studio in East Palo Alto.

“The name of the game since day one has been to keep the overhead low,” Shirley says. In order to be able to afford the studio, he converted part of his building into housing, which he split with roommates who also ran a screen printing business. Within a year and a half, he went from working on a Dell computer with two microphone inputs to a fully functioning studio with just about anything a musician could need. In part, he chalks up this success to a bit of right-place right-time.

“I knew a lot of people who were in bands on the Peninsula and there wasn’t really anybody doing DIY recording,” Shirley says.

Eric Victorino is in high spirits when he answers the phone. Why shouldn’t he be. It’s Friday evening, the laughter and his initial distraction indicates he is amongst friends. Plus, he notes, “I’ve been drinking some wine.”

But Victorino has plenty more to be cheerful about. Not long ago, he surpassed the crowdfunding goal for his planned solo album as E. James. Plus, he has recently resumed rehearsals with Strata—the San Jose-bred alternative rock band that nearly attained mainstream success back in the mid-2000s, only to see its ascent cut short by a less-than-amicable breakup—and according to the singer, things are going swimmingly these days.

Strata is currently preparing for their first show in about a year. Their last performance was at The Independent in San Francisco. Back then, they played a set composed almost entirely of deep cuts—the tracks they wanted to play after their six-year hiatus. In retrospect, that might have been a bit ambitious, Victorino notes.

“We played obscure stuff that only the most hardcore fans would know about,” he recalls. “You felt the drag about halfway through the set. It was like a Foo Fighters set, except without all the hits. It was just way too long.”

That’s not the plan this time around. “I think the novelty for us has worn off a bit,” Victorino says. “We crafted the setlist for this show the same way we would if it was 2007 and we were on tour. We’re not going for nostalgia. We’re going for the hardest-hitting songs and the ones people want to hear.”

Strata are slated to play The Ritz this Friday, along with Citabria, Cemetery Sun and Louis Wain & The Cats, and Victorino says they aim to make their first appearance at the SoFA club a memorable one. “I’m super excited to be playing there and bring back those old memories.”

The “old memories” to which Victorino is referring were formed in Strata’s early days—back when The Cactus Club was still running—just across the street from where The Ritz is now.

“There’s so much history there,” he says, referring to the Cactus—which hosted some of the biggest alternative acts of the ’90s, before they were huge, including Green Day and Deftones.

Recalling those days, Victorino says that local bands used to have a place to ramp up—to play a super small stage at first, then getting the chance to open for a larger touring band, which would draw a larger crowd and give a young and aspiring band exposure to a wider audience. “That’s what’s missing [in San Jose] right now.”

When asked whether Strata might be coming out with a new album anytime soon, Victorino says that new music is likely inevitable—it’s only a matter of whether they’ll actually be able to get into a proper studio and press up a proper single, EP or full length.

“I don’t think we’ve ever been able to practice without writing stuff,” he says, explaining that the band usually comes up with new riffs at every practice. “It’s the way we start a jam session—we build on each other’s ideas and song ideas come out and we record all of them. The potential for a new Strata record is always there.”

He also feels that the band is more focused than they’ve been in quite some time—and are definitely the most focused since reuniting back in 2014. “Last time it was like, ‘Holy shit, we’re actually doing this.’ and this time it’s like, ‘Let’s do this the best we can.’”

Victorino isn’t the only one who is pumped about playing. According to the singer, a number of Strata super fans have already purchased VIP tickets for this week’s show—some of them are coming from as far away as Baltimore.

The limited edition tickets give fans the opportunity to hang out with the band during sound check, before the show. Last year, he says, they did the same thing, and a fan of theirs came out from Texas. “To me, that’s the kind of stuff that helps me feel like what we’re doing is important. When somebody loves us that much that they’re going to buy a ticket and come across the country and hang out.”

Strata, Citabria and Cemetery Sun play The Ritz on Sept. 25. Show starts at 8pm.

Eric Victorino, frontman of electropop duo The Limousines and the recently reunited Strata, has released the first single from his new solo project, Gestalt.

The gloomy, downtempo IDM track is titled “Captured,” and was uploaded to YouTube yesterday. Directed by David Dutton, the clip features two San Francisco Ballet dancers silhouetted against a white background. Dutton applies a visual echo effect, causing the dancer’s limbs to multiply—flowering outward like the arms of the Hindu goddess Durga and swirling like an organic windmill.

“I think part of what this project is going to be about is not really sitting down and focusing so much on meaning,” Victorino says. “That’s implied in Gestalt itself. “I’m not really sitting down and saying I’m writing a song about this particular situation. It’s more like about a couple lines about a feeling.”

As such, Victorino says, he wanted the video for “Captured” to be as abstract as possible. He didn’t want the video to tell a story. He just wanted “something mesmerizing,” which would allow the viewer to get lost in the sounds and his lyrics, which he delivers in a hushed, breathy tone, unlike anything he’s done in Strata or The Limos.

“It’s something that I always admired when I hear someone else singing that way,” Victorino says of his vocal delivery on the new song. He says he plans to continue singing that way on all of his Gestalt material. “Not to take anything away from really yelping it out, but I think there’s something to be said for practicing subtlety.”

Aaron Axelsen, program director of Live 105, debuted the video this morning on his blog on the radio station’s website. Watch the video below and be sure to check back for our full interview with Victorino to find out why he spent an entire day listening to “Captured” on repeat.

Before they begin the European leg of their tour with the Sounds at the end of the this month, Campbell’s Limousines have posted two covers for free download at their website, thelimousines.com.

It’s rare for the band to cover other artists; even live, they usually stick to originals. These two songs have been the exception. One of them, New Order’s “Temptation,” the Limos have been playing live off-and-on for quite some time now. The studio version available for download is fairly faithful to the original, though lead singer Eric Victorino is a more emotive vocalist than Bernard Sumner ever was. It’s yet more proof of New Order’s huge influence on the current electro bands.

The second one may surprise fans of the band who haven’t heard them perform it live yet, it started popping up in their set late last year. It’s Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al,” and it diverges quite a bit from the original, with an extended ambient opening and some great percussion (don’t know if it’s from their live drummer, Dino Campanella of Dredg, or programmed by Gio Giusti).

The Limos are also issuing their first EP, Scrapbook, on CD for the first time (it was vinyl only when it came out in 2009). They’re letting fans who pre-order it write a personal dedication that will be included in the packaging; the details are also at their site.

2011 was a big year for Campbell’s Limousines. The electropop duo’s debut record, Get Sharp, was released by Dangerbird Records (home to Fitz and the Tantrums, Silversun Pickups, Ben Lee and others), they spent the summer playing festivals like Outside Lands and BFD, and, in an ironic twist, MTV played the video for “Internet Killed the Video Star,” and featured them during MTV Push Week. They toured the East Coast with Neon Trees, but their biggest boost of all may have come from the national tour they just finished with Swedish indie sensations the Sounds.

“The tour was awesome,” says lead singer Eric Victorino.

Clearly, the Sounds were impressed, too—they invited the Limos back for a 25-date European tour that winds through Germany, Belgium, the UK, France, Spain, the Czech Republic and of course Sweden.

That tour starts in January, with just enough time in between to play a couple of Bay Area shows. Unfortunately, their annual pre-Christmas show at the Blank Club tonight has been sold out for a month. Hometown fans have learned it’s the best show of the year to reconnect with the band’s music in an intimate space. That’s exactly how the band and club owner Corey O’Brien designed it.

“Corey lets us do our thing, he trusts us,” says Victorino. “We just book a couple DJs and we play by ourselves. Last year, it was just us and a DJ set.”

Those who didn’t get tickets to the Blank show will have another chance to see them at their New Year’s Eve show at the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco.

They’re also finishing up a video for “The Future,” off Get Sharp. It’s a follow-up to their awesome zombie-themed short film for “Internet Killed the Video Star” that they produced locally last year.

“It’s a similar situation to last time where we just had a massive idea and a lot of luck. Everyone kind of came together,” says Victorino.

When the band put out a call for volunteers to help out on the “Future” shoot, they got a little sampling of how much their fan base has expanded in the last year.

“Some of them were brand new fans who just saw us at Outside Lands and said ‘I had no idea you guys were even from the Bay Area,’” he says. “I love people knowing we’re from here, but it feels like something’s working when someone just sees you at a festival and becomes a fan, and then they find out you live down the street.”