WHEN PROMOTER Chris Alba sought to kickstart a career as a DJ six years ago, rather than head out to the clubs, he stayed home. Alba staged his own parties in the downtown Los Angeles warehouse that he shared with five other artists. He called himself Whiiite. And in that DIY music scene, he met Sonny Moore, an EDM producer living in another warehouse nearby. The two DJs instantly clicked.

Moore was working on his second EP, one that would—unbeknownst to him and Alba at the time—go double platinum, earn a Grammy and a few years later help to eventually land him on the cover of Rolling Stone. Most people know Moore by his stage name, Skrillex.

“He showed me some production techniques, and explained some music philosophies that I still use with every production,” Alba says. “He taught how to make my own drums and synth sounds, and not just use a loop out of a sample pack.”

Alba, who is half Filipino and half Norwegian, grew up all over the United States, from LA to Louisiana. His wide-ranging sound reflects his diverse upbringing, with a repertoire that runs from electro house to sample-heavy trap.

The full range of his talents will be on display at Pure Lounge in Sunnyvale on June 6.

So why “Whiiite?” His branding acumen led him to choose the highly conspicuous name (it’s simply pronounced “White”) for SEO purposes, so people could easily find him online.

“I wanted to have a super-recognizable name like MSTRKRFT,” Alba says. “When I first got into Justice, I couldn’t find anything on them. I would google ‘Justice France’ and end up on some government website.”

After moving numerous times in his childhood, Alba graduated from high school in Pennsylvania, then ended up back on the West Coast for college at Cal State University, Fullerton.

There he studied film, with an emphasis in anime and graphic novels. To make some money on the side he promoted parties and DJed. When he realized he could survive off music alone he dropped out of school, just a handful of credits shy of graduation.

That was 2005. By 2008, Alba was living in downtown Los Angeles, rising through the ranks as a local DJ and promoter. He and his best friend, manager and business partner, Ryan Jaso, threw a Sunday night party at a club called Play, where local EDM acts, including Dim Mak label head Steve Aoki, would play to tiny crowds for little money.

“We’d be happy if 40 people showed up,” Alba says. “I think Aoki’s booking fee was only like $500 back then.”

Before hiring Aoki to play at his parties, Alba frequented Aoki’s scene in Hollywood, which drew big names to play intimate shows. Aoki’s parties, however, quickly became mainstream. Alba and Jaso stepped in to revive the original scene, in which up-and-coming producers played for audiences more attracted to music than glamour.

Alba has the look of both Skrillex and Aoki. All three are skinny and have long, straight, silky black hair and a bevy of tattoos (Alba’s most prominent one, on his forearm, is the face of Harry Houdini).

“We come from rock,” Alba says of himself, Aoki and Skrillex. “Our first CDs were Guns N’ Roses and Mötley Crüe, and that informs our music and style. You could see the division back then, between hip-hop and techno and rock, and we were rock flavored.”

While growing as a promoter, Alba bought Ableton software and began tinkering with remixes and original songs. Sometimes he remixed songs by the acts in the shows he was promoting, like Rusko, whom Alba discovered early in the dubstep producer’s career.

By October 2012, Alba had enough original music to release his first EP, Whiiite Begins, a broad mix of electro, drumstep and dubstep. Incorporating his passion for film and graphic storytelling, a 10-minute anime film, titled The Birth of Whiiite, written and directed by Alba and scored with songs from the album, accompanied the EP’s release. It tells the story of mild-mannered Chris, who is abducted by mysterious forces and given super-human musical powers.

Alba uses his music as inspiration for his anime filmmaking, and vice versa.

“Sometimes, when I’m making music it’s almost like I’m scoring a movie,” Alba says. “‘Houdini,’ [the title track on Whiiite Begins] sounds like a chase scene, because that’s where it fit into the film.”

Alba plans to release a new anime short film with each of his first five EPs, the second of which (so far unnamed) will be released late this summer. Unlike the Skrillex-like, high-spirited, playful sound of Whiiite Begins, his next project will be more trap-based—hip-hop samples infused with the headbanging rock vibes of his childhood.

“I want to inject dance into hip-hop” Alba says, “Whatever I make, the energy of Guns N’ Roses and Mötley has to come through. I like it when it’s rowdy. I like when it feels right on the edge, like there’s about to be a riot.”

Whiiite
June 6, 10pm
Pure Lounge, Sunnyvale
Guest list free before 10:30pm; $10 between 10:30 and 11pm
Register at purelounge408.com

With Electronic Dance Music still emerging as a genre, Skrillex’s set at Outside Lands last weekend was probably the best free publicity the Identity Festival could ask for going into its return to Shoreline Friday.

When the EDM-focused ID Fest came around last year, the music was mostly still a club phenomenon, at least in the South Bay. But since then, there’s been a lot of epic raving to go around, from Bassnectar’s San Jose show to the I Love This City festival to Skrillex’s Golden Gate debut.

This year’s headliner is Eric Prydz, who I think can be largely credited (or blamed, depending on your point of view) for kickstarting the ‘80s revival, which started bubbling up not long after his 2004 song “Call on Me,” which took the title line (and vocal sample) from Steve Winwood’s mid-80s megahit “Valerie,” drenched it in electro riffs, and stuffed it into the most laughably hypersexual (and yet, still totally hot) music video ever set in a gym.

The Shoreline stop also features Le Castle Vania, who has become a South Bay fave after regular club stops here, and Doctor P (the only DJ who also played I Love This City), as well as Excision, Paul Van Dyk, Hardwell, Bingo Players, Showtek, Noisia, Adrian Lux, Eva Simons, Audrey Napoleon, The Eye and more.

The IDENTITY FESTIVAL will be presented Fri, Aug. 17 at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, 2pm; $60.

Los Angeles-based producer Myndset has remixed everyone from Deadmau5 to Drake, and shared a stage with electro pioneers Steve Angello, Congorock, and Cedric Gervais. He spins at Los Gatos Bar & Grill on Thursday, April 5th. And over at SanJose.com, you can enter to win your very own private party, complete with VIP access and complimentary bottle service for up to five friends.

Myndset’s something of a blog favorite, and his Hype Machine remixes and repertoire of electro and progressive house tracks place him squarely alongside fellow internationalists Diplo and the Swedish House Mafia. The guy puts on a show, complete with oddball headgear and *gasp* – turntables. That’s worth a trip to Los Gatos, right?

San Jose’s nightlife has a high tolerance for bad taste—eurotrash masquerading as pop, cheesy nightclubs with aspirations beyond their zip code, and most importantly: lacking a single decent place to listen to electronic music. For those of us who’ve lost interest in making the + 100 mile roundtrip trek to San Francisco, we’ve been confined to the living rooms of close friends or huddled by the speakers at a house party, exchanging playlists, URLs, and idle complaints.

It’s where I used to find San Jose DJ Chris “Demi Child” Rios. Not content to bitch and moan, Rios has become proactive in the last year. Soft-spoken and unassuming, he’s been quietly networking with a string of like-minded DJs and club owners to find a place where both the inveterate clubgoer and electronic geek can find common ground. And with the broadly titled Bass Club, his newest monthly held at Motif, he believes he’s done it.

We spoke about the rise of brostep (read: Skrillex), why the EDM acronym sucks, and kidnapping groupies.

What’s your take on San Jose’s scene?

As a citizen, I love the nightlife—it’s alive! As a DJ, it brings me down at times. It’s a big city and yet everybody knows what you do, how you do, and who you do. Which is a great benefit for entertainers, promoters and DJs but it stays contained. San Jose is great and has talent but no one really listens or gives anyone a chance due to various cliques and clichés.

It’s hard to get an “in” unless you’re in bed with a t-shirt company, taco truck, or radio station. I kinda hit on those points for our night. The music has changed little since I moved back. But it’s still a friendly place overall.

What are you guys playing?

A lot of bass, percussion heavy house, techno, b-more, indie disco, moombahton and an emphasis on San Jose stuff. You’ll hear a lot from Justin Weisberg’s label Filthy WHAT?!, and lots of Bay Area-produced music. No David Guetta.

Shots fired. Best party you’ve been to?

It’s a tossup between Lights Down Low and the Rickshaw Stop with Jeffrey Paradise and Richie Panic – the glory days, I guess. Those parties are what my friends are trying to mimic.

EDM (electronic dance music) is a terrible acronym, wouldn’t you agree?

I was barely aware of it until last year. I think it’s from the younger crowd. It’s funny cause I didn’t quite get it until I realized that’s what we used to call IDM—”indie dance music”—in early 2000 [sighs]. It’s what the younger generation called it, and it has a stigma. I know what you mean though—it sucks. People who say that usually listen to Skrillex.

Can you explain his popularity? Let’s talk ‘brostep.’

[laughs] There’s this guy in Santa Cruz who plays it, very wompy and grindy, it’s electronic grunge for head-bobbers. Dubstep isn’t really my thing. I’m into UK love step. That stuff is saucy, like Roni Size and Goldie.

I once read that Wu Tang’s Raekwon refuses to listen to rap music on the weekends—something about needing to clear his mind. With that incredibly bogus segue, what do you listen to that’s under 120 BPM?

So true. To keep my pallet fresh, everything I listen to in my car is either a part of my set or way off in left field. I usually listen to a lot of older punk and indie. Right now I’m into some Southeast Asian go-go music I found at Streetlight.

A lot of stuff from people out here too, like Albert Preset. I can go on for days about Joy Division then go to talking about some bootleg of The Supremes found at a garage sale.

Somewhat apropos of that, I’ve always wished I could’ve seen New Order at The Hacienda in Manchester. If you could back to any scene in the world, where would you go?

Berlin in the early 90s. I’m so inspired by that scene. It’s the groundwork for what we have going on over [in the States], especially [considering how] Detroit evolved.

After the wall came down, my dad was in charge of detaining that area for the army. There were all these abandoned and condemned buildings, and people claimed [them] and set up little clubs along the border of the wall. [The army] had no responsibility whatsoever – only to investigate and make sure nothing crazy was going on beyond each wall. I’ve looked at these pictures and seen [something] that almost resembled Manchester.

And finally, why do girls dig DJs? Aren’t you guys basically glorified members of the waitstaff? (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)

Oh man, at times I wish. But it’s a “who you know” type of thing. DJs seem to know a lot of people and girls figure if you want to have a good time, follow that guy. I’ve found that it’s mostly the wrong girl that winds up going for the DJ. I can’t really engage with someone like that.

It can get annoying. I remember one time when I worked with Insomniac on the Electronic Daisy Carnival in Tulare. Hyperreal sent out twenty of us to cover the event but we [had] to hijack a golf cart and pickup some girls to fill the backstage for “atmosphere.” No one knew [that] the main DJ wasn’t “into girls.” After we brought the girls, the agent had us get rid of half of them because they all tried to get on stage and make out with him in the middle of the set.

SJ Bass Club is the second Friday of every month @ Motif, 389 S. 1st Street. DJ Wool headlines the next event on Friday, March 9th. More info.

If you’re like me, and have listened to a total of 12 minutes of FM radio since the advent of Pandora, here is a reason to tune back in: Live 105’s Wobble Wednesdays, hosted by Menace and Dallas. It features two glorious hours of the fast-rising dubstep genre, characterized by its quivering bass and popularized by DJ/producers like Grammy-nominated Skrillex and Santa Cruz native Bassnectar.

The show is even worth enduring those high-decibel, screaming-in-an-empty amphitheater furniture blowout sale commercials, and comes at a time when dubstep is gaining traction beyond the ecstasy-chomping, earplug-sporting crowd.

The lineup is a mix of artists the hosts have excavated from the underground scene by poring over YouTube videos and taking fan suggestions. If nothing else, at least we know we have a decent option if Pandora fails to invent a viable business model.

Tune into the weekly airing of Wobble Wednesday at 11:59pm on the FM radio station 105.3, or check out past lineups on their website.