This writer is utterly devastated to realize that early 2010s music has now come around for its time in the nostalgia spotlight. The once forward-thinking jams of MGMT, STRFKR, Foster the People and alt-J now bring listeners back to a simpler time, when one could dance with friends and do crazy things like “leave the house without getting sick.” The glistening synths, bright guitars, slinky rhythms and carefree lyricism of the time are now a tonic to the low morale that has become our norm—but an electric torch burns on at The Ritz this Thursday.

Electric Feels
Thu, 9pm, $20
The Ritz, San Jose

On paper, cover bands are a win-win situation: the band gets to play their favorite artist’s material, and the audience gets to relive their favorite musical memories. But not just anyone can do it. Audiences can sniff out a poser from a mile away, and only the greatest can truly live up to the hype of the fanbase. This is the envious position that both Strangelove (the Depeche Mode Experience) and Electric Duke (David Bowie tribute) live in—from the look, to the sound, the dances and stagecraft, they’ve completely won over the hardcore audience by paying attention to every detail.

Strangelove
Fri, 8pm, $25
The Ritz, San Jose

In the 1998 action comedy movie Six-String Samurai, a Buddy Holly stand-in wields a katana slaying Mad Max pastiches of rock and rolls greatest legends. During a bar fight scene, a band plays with an outlandish look and ferocious style on oversized instruments. You’d think this band would be an invention of the film’s Mad Max aesthetic, but it’s the actual Igor & the Red Elvises! That’s just their brand. They play an eclectic blend of psychobilly, surf rock and funk. They’re impossible to pin down, and they’re bringing the unstoppable party with them to the Ritz Thursday night.

Igor & Red Elvises
Thu, 8pm, $15
The Ritz, San Jose

Ryan DiBiase was blown away that 225 people showed up to The Ritz in 2017 to see his latest skate video, Toga 4. By then, he’d been doing it for a while, but that one was quite the jump.

He premiered his first video, More Like Toga, in 2011 at a friend’s house to a crowd of five people. Its follow-up, Toga Party, premiered in 2012 at a different friend’s apartment to twenty. Seventy-five came to see Toga 3, which he screened at his own house. But the leap to Toga 4 was particularly amazing: suddenly, he was seeing strangers show up.

“That was huge. I saw a bunch of random heads that were out,” DiBiase says. “It’s a good, kind of butterflies in your stomach feeling. When your part comes on and everyone’s cheering for your shit, it’s crazy. Everything you’ve worked for; this is crazy right now.”

Now, after three and a half years of hard work—some during the pandemic—DiBiase is back with Togacinco, his fifth and final skate video. It’s the most work he’s ever put into a Toga video, the product of roughly 500 hours of footage. As with Toga 4, the film premieres at The Ritz, this time on Friday, Nov. 19th.

“[After this] I’m just going to take a breather and focus on photo stuff,” DiBiase explains. “Do some serious work and focus on life.”

DiBiase started skateboarding in 2009. Before long, filming himself and his friends became a natural part of the activity. He called it the Toga crew as a reference to Saratoga, where he grew up (nothing to do with Animal House).

TogaCinco—which is nearly an hour in length—is a departure not only from the style of the previous Toga videos, but from the standard skate video format itself. For the previous four videos, DiBiase created montages around specific skaters. The scenes in Togacinco, meanwhile, are created around skating locations, spots from all over the bay and beyond: Oakland, San Francisco, Brentwood, Santa Cruz and San Diego.

With the feel of a diverse, interesting playlist, the film creates a near mesmerizing quality. Viewers will sometimes watch several skaters in a row attempt the same trick, utilizing different techniques to varying degrees of success. The locations vary from actual skate parks to gonzo city locations, where the excitement is in seeing the creative ways they use the environment for tricks.

“Our San Diego trip was awesome. That was our first proper trip for filming,” DiBiase says. “We had all traveled before and gotten little clips on our phones and stuff. But with this it was like, okay, this is a filming mission. We rented a minivan for the homies. Airbnb. It was on. That was a huge moment of the video.”

Part of the reason that the video is divided up by location was that there were just so many people in it. The Toga Crew is an ever-changing entity. Sometimes friends of friends would show up on a shoot day. If they got a good trick in, they might make the cut. Additionally, with three and a half years of filming, people would come and go, some even moving out of the South Bay.

“Toga’s never been one solid crew,” DiBiase says. “It’s always morphed into whoever’s kicking it with us at the time. Homies getting more serious with their girls or some of the younger homies graduating from college and moving back to their hometowns. People popping back. San Jose State is a big commuter school.”

As long as three and a half years feels under normal circumstances, it feels particularly long now with everything that went down over the last year and a half. For DiBiase, watching the video brings up lots of nostalgic feelings: it’s a weird, scattered document of his whole life since 2017.

“It’s like a net. Whatever you capture in that time is what you get. Surprisingly, all the stuff flows together really well,” DiBiase says. “[When we started] I met my girlfriend and now we’re serious. I was living with a bunch of buddies, now I’m with her. I’ve kind of been settled in a more routine kind of life. I’m steady with this new job and just focused on trying to do my best in all pillars of life.”

Togacinco 
Fri, 8pm, $5
The Ritz, San Jose

Kolohe Kai’s show in San Jose has been hotly anticipated and quickly sold out. The island reggae band was started in 2009 by lead singer Roman De Peralta from Oahu. Popularly known for its sunny pop songs such as “Ehu Girl” and “Cool Down,” Kolohe Kai also has more roots-rock and skankin’ reggae influenced songs throughout its discography, including past hits such as “Start Trying” from 2014, or “Feel The Sunshine,” released this year. Tuesday’s show will also feature Hawaii’s own Fia, another heavy hitting reggae artist from Oahu, and the Bay Area’s CRSB, a Filipino island reggae duo.

Kolohe Kai
Tues, 8pm, Sold Out
The Ritz, San Jose

Remember in the original Matrix when our hero, Neo—played by Keanu Reeves—tells the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar he saw the same black cat walk by twice? 

His crewmates grow anxious as he describes the experience, telling him: “déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something.” 

If that’s true and reality’s a simulation, then it’s no wonder Body Jumper—released in August by California post-punk band Provoker—carries an eerie sense of déjà vu throughout, seeing as so much has changed during the pandemic.

Heavy, dark and dreamy, the massive full-length floats through an algorithm of nostalgia while continually feeling fresh and singular. Listeners might swear they’ve heard it before, but where exactly will continually escape them.

True to its title, Body Jumper is a concept album about a person running away from their own life, using technology to escape by inhabiting bodies like avatars—all set to a darkwave soundtrack.

“They end up chasing the same problems as before, just as a different person,” surmises guitarist and founder, Jonathan Lopez, who adds that it’s more science than fiction.

“It’s something everyone does, even through our phones: Instagram, TikTok or any new technology. It’s the same idea.”

Strands of Joy Division, Killing Joke and Suicide can be found coded within the DNA of Body Jumper, without directly sounding like any of them, an intentional process according to Lopez.

“I didn’t go into this with any specific influence in mind,” he says. “I just copied a lot of ‘80s sounds, using a Roland-707, tweaking the drum kit, adding delays and making it sound almost like it’s on a cassette. We wanted to take it to the next level without losing any elements.” 

Founded in 2015, Provoker was originally intended as Lopez’s solo project. At the time he was a film student at DeAnza College in Cupertino and had the idea to write soundtracks to fake horror movies.

“I was used to being in short-lived punk bands where we’d just make demos,” he remembers. “So I thought to apply that concept to a fake movie.” 

That year he released Sneak Peak! (Mercy Stroke Original Soundtrack) followed by 2017’s Dry City Maniac Original Soundtrack, alongside fictional poster art and title sequences. During this time Lopez met up with singer Christian Petty, another Bay Area musician with a love for R&B. They were introduced through Petty’s brother, Alex, and met at a San Francisco screening of the black comedy horror film, The Greasy Strangler—which is just as weird as it sounds. 

“Afterward we just stood in a circle very awkwardly and didn’t say anything,” laughs Petty. “But we later talked about collaborating and he sent me some tracks.”

With the addition of Wil Palacioius on bass and Kristian Moreno on drums, in 2018 Provoker was complete. The same year, they released their 5 song Darkangel EP. In 2019, the band moved from the Bay Area to Los Angeles to write and record Body Jumper, finishing most of it before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In March, 2020, they were two days into what would’ve been a major, multiple state tour when the world shut down. Rather than power off, they used the time to write new music and finish their full-length. 

After signing to Swedish label YEAR0001 earlier this year, they used livestreaming to master Body Jumper, a fitting conclusion to a record about technology crossing impossible distances. 

With the world reopened and their debut now out, Provoker is ready for big changes in the matrix of life. The band is relocating back to the Bay and sets out on a Pacific Southwest tour this month, before heading to the UK in December. 

And even Neo is a fan. Ok, not really, that Instragram photo of Keanu Reeves wearing a Provoker shirt is photoshopped—although the band says they would love to have him in a video sometime.

However, they have earned a dedicated following online and the few one-off shows they played earlier this year—both in-state and on the East Coast—have either sold-out or come very close to it. 

“I’m pretty amazed that people are singing the lyrics to almost all the songs,” Petty says with a laugh. “It’s hard for me to even understand myself sometimes. It’s pretty crazy that they’re able to all sing along.”

Provoker
Sat, 8pm, $18
The Ritz, San Jose
theritzsanjose.com/

Oakland’s Morty Orkin has been dedicated to honoring the work of the great pop artists by way of tribute bands for a long time, moving from Michael Jackson to Neil Diamond to the one and only Prince. The Purple Ones have been in the game since 2012 and their commitment to doing Prince’s work justice is singular. They don’t do costumes, they don’t do look-a-likes: they keep it all focused on the music, the expression and the “controlled chaos” that defined Prince’s culture of bandrunning. Friday welcomes all twelve of the Purple Ones to rock out like it’s 1999 in 1982 in 2021.

The Purple Ones
Fri, 8pm, $20
The Ritz, San Jose

This Saturday, the smooth, velvety tones of Trish Toledo will bless The Ritz, a downtown San Jose staple which only recently reopened its doors after the pandemic. Toledo, an Ecuadorian and Guatemalan soul singer and artist from Carson, has a powerful voice that looms over the soft and steady beat of her live band. Her music is something to dance to, to swing to, to hold someone close to. There is love, heartbreak, history and more in her music. Opening for Toledo will be Kris Lager, a blues rocker from Nebraska, and San Jose’s DJ Albert Jenkins and DJ David Ma.

Trish Toledo
Wed, 7pm, $30
The Ritz, San Jose

Though he was already well-established as a metal guitarist, when Miguel Iniguez launched Starfarer in 2017 he was a total newcomer to the world of electronic music. Memories of 1980s horror and sci-fi soundtracks fired his imagination, inspiring him to take his new project in a radically different direction.

“I was heavily inspired by John Carpenter,” he says, citing the soundtracks for The Thing (1982) and They Live (1988) as major influences.

And so Starfarer became his first outlet for original synth-based music. This Wednesday, the project opens for Transformers: The Movie soundtrack tribute band the Cybertronic Spree. It’s a fitting show for a project he says was always intended “to make spacey music inspired by ‘80s soundtracks and video games.”

While he enjoyed the interactivity of his previous band Miseria, Iniguez says working alone has afforded him greater latitude to explore his own ideas. Even when he was still playing metal, he’d begun learning his way around the technological side of music: software, digital audio workstations and drum programming.

“All that was really helpful when I switched over to electronic music,” he says. Because he works primarily with plug-ins and virtual synthesizers (rather than traditional or vintage standalone keyboards), the transition was nearly seamless.

After debuting the project with the moody retro piece “Star Traveller,” Iniguez set a goal for himself: one album per year. He quickly established a more ambitious pace. Today, the Starfarer catalog includes three albums of original material plus an EP. Along the way, he’s also released assorted non-album singles, including an inspired reading of Kraftwerk’s “Metropolis.” The fourth Starfarer album, The Dark, comes out October 22.

March of this year also saw the release of Multiverse, a collection in which 18 other artists remixed Starfarer tracks.

“Most of them I know personally,” Iniguez says. The rest are artists with whom he’s interacted on social media. While pleased with all of the tracks, Iniguez gives special praise to Portland cyberfunk artist DreamReaper’s remix of “Strange Land,” a track that first appeared on 2019’s Into the Unknown. “It sounds totally different from the original,” he says.

In an era increasingly dominated by the singles format, Iniguez remains a believer in the album, but he also fully embraces the digital age. “To the Stars,” the opening track and an album highlight from his third record, Voyagers, got particular notice online. 

“It took off on Spotify and got over 300,000 streams,” he says. 

The project’s sweeping, cinematic nature hasn’t gone unnoticed by artists working in the visual medium either. Recently, Twitch user DSKoopa—a retro game store owner in Seattle with a hefty following—licensed “To the Stars” for use on his stream, contributing to the song’s success online.

Despite being a relative newcomer, Iniguez is on track to become a leader in the local synthwave community. In 2019, he launched Synth Valley Productions to promote the scene in San Jose and the Bay Area. And when the pandemic put a stop to live performances, he set out to organize streaming shows for himself and other synthwave artists.

Yet back when he first developed the concept for Starfarer, live performance wasn’t part of the plan. 

“I was thinking,” he recalls with a laugh, “do people really want to watch somebody just mess around with the keyboard on stage?” 

But after attending a synthwave concert by FM 84 and The Midnight at Turbo Drive/DNA Lounge, he found himself inspired. 

“I really missed playing live,” he says. “So I decided to plan it out, to take my electronic music and do performances with it. So—to add more to the entertainment aspect—I came up with the outfit.”

Live, Starfarer is the total package: attired in a spacesuit with a helmet, Iniguez plays real-time keyboard leads and solos over the backing tracks he programmed in his home studio. The visual spectacle of the interstellar astronaut rocking the keys makes for a memorable audience experience, and draws a variety of reactions—some familiar even to those of us here on Earth. 

“A lot of people headbang or dance,” Iniguez says. “It’s always a good time.”

When asked what it’s like to perform inside a space suit, he laughs.

“Towards the end,” he admits, “I’m really sweaty.”

Starfarer w/ The Cybertronic Spree
Wed, 7pm, $25
The Ritz, San Jose

By marrying a variety of Latin American rhythms—including Mexican and Colombian cumbia, bossa nova, bolero and tango—with rock, soul and R&B, La Santa Cecilia have created a sound that’s truly pan-American. The LA-based sextet initially reached a larger audience in 2013 with their anti-migra protest hit “Ice el Hielo.” Then, in 2017, they won the Grammy for best Latin Rock Album the same year they appeared on the soundtrack for the Pixar movie Coco. Highlight performers are the fast-picking guitarist Gloria Estrada and immensely talented lead singer Marisol “El Marisoul” Hernandez.

La Santa Cecilia
Fri, 8pm, $35
The Ritz, San Jose