On the weekend of Sept. 26, every BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train was scattered with scantily-clothed, leather-clad individuals holding clear plastic bags. Ready to party, the trains connected to Portola Music Festival, an electronic dance festival held in South San Francisco’s Pier 80.
Celebrating its fifth year, the festival was set against a backdrop of the city’s skyline, with its industrial qualities shining through, framing each stage and providing a lofty 60 acres for attendees to roam.
Through the weekend, festivalgoers had the opportunity to be immersed in five different stages ranging from traditional festival stages to a warehouse rave experience and despacio, an all-day analog DJ set.
Portola is a strictly 21 and over festival, and attendees held a respectful and collective sense of community without being glued to their phones.
Throughout the two days, crowds were continuously immersed in the music — dancing freely with new and old friends on the grounds. During the walk between stages, the panoramic views of the Pier and Crane stages meant it was a slim chance they’d miss the beginning of the performance.
The DJs of Portola
Born and raised in Santa Cruz, California, Clearcast is a rising Bay Area based producer, DJ and musician, who has played alongside the likes of Skrillex, Fred Again, and A.G. Cook. After playing at Lightning in a Bottle this past spring, Portola was an opportunity for them to play bigger venues.
“It’s really cool to be here at Portola, representing Santa Cruz and being a part of a festival here, you know, it’s the first festival in San Francisco I’ve ever played. So it’s very cool.”
Portola has significance in not only the Bay Area but well beyond, as a staple in the electronic and EDM scene, calling in artists from all over the world to make their mark in this buzzing genre. With the opportunity to make a stamp in music history, Clearcast remarks on what that means to them.
“A great part about it is I have so many friends here. I feel so much love, so much support, and it’s getting to share that moment with all my friends and people that have been following me here in the Bay that is really special,” they said.
An eccentric and exciting DJ like Clearcast can often be hard to pin down musically, genres seem to elude electronic artists and for good reason, with their vibrant sound pinging all over the music world.
“I’m really interested in the intersection between, what some people might call internet electronica, like post-hyperpop, online centric pop music. So glitchy, vocal, chops, really textual production and UK dance music. I’m trying to explore that middle ground of where the two meet.”
Opening Saturday afternoon is Felly Fell, a San Francisco-based electronic musician who is predominant in the Bay Area scene. Growing up in Santa Barbara, for DJ Felly Fell, otherwise known as Mackenzie Fell, her DJ endeavors stemmed from her love of electronic music and enjoyment of participating in the culture surrounding live entertainment events.
As an alumni to KCPR as a Disc Jockey and Club 91 as a DJ, Cal Poly is where she learned how to perform. Like many other college DJs, Fell purchased a mixing board in the freshman Sierra Madre dorms and began learning the basics.
“It wasn’t until I saw literally a frat guy DJing at a party at Cal Poly that I conceptualized like, oh it felt attainable when it was not like this huge DJ on the Coachella stage,” Fell said. “So it felt like, ‘oh, okay, I could actually maybe do this myself.’ So yeah, I was like, ‘if you can do that, I could do that.'”
After exploring various sub-genres in electronic music over the years, Fell settled into electronic sub-generes within bass music coinciding with breakbeats recurring from deep substep.
“I think that DJing for people is almost like a different form of conversation because you’re able to like speak to each other without words and just through body language and dancing and seeing how people also bond on dance music floors, that’s where I’ve created a lot of my deepest relationships” Fell said. ”It’s this just like all encapsulating sound waves that goes over a whole group of people and makes them all feel connected from this one point of shared fashion and interests.”
During her time in college Fell participated in local music collectives and continued being invested as she relocated to the Bay Area post grad. Since then, Fell is continually passionate about staying independent and being involved in the local underground Bay Area music scene.
“Playing on this level was a really different experience for me. I missed being a bit physically closer to the crowd as I can be at smaller events, but it was really cool to get the opportunity to represent my local scene on that scale of an event, play on a huge sound system, and yeah, I get to really engross people in the sound and the feeling that I was trying to curate on that size and scale of the stage and the sound system, that was a very unique fun experience for me,” Fell said.
The Performances
The atmosphere of Portola teemed with life, in every corner of the expansive pier there were countless interactions happening amongst the approximately 25,000 guests in attendance.
Set on the outskirts of the Southern edge of the city, the San Francisco skyline loomed overhead the Pier Stage, which saw notable performances from Fcukers, Zara Larsson, Dog Blood and Swedish House Mafia. With such an impressively large venue, the five stages provided adequate viewing of the more than 50 performers who took the spotlight.
A few standout performances of note were Underscores, Adela, ear and MGNA Crrrta. While it’s assured that every performance had buzz, these five captured the attention of hundreds of fans and served a diverse population of listeners.
Underscores, a rising hyper-pop electronic artist from San Francisco delivered a standout performance. Earlier this year in spring, Underscores released her third studio album, “U.”
Opening the performance from behind the stage, with her signature headphones, designed-dyed hair and casual outfit, the screen flashed rapidly and welcomed her to the stage. Whether the audience was familiar with Underscores’ music or not, during the performance of “Tell me (U Want It),” they soon became immersed in the energy surrounding the Crane Stage.
Underscores mentioned how impactful this performance was for her personally, in an homage to her hometown of San Francisco.
“I’ve been wanting to play at this festival for so long. I grew up on Portola Drive. I miss you guys so much,” she said.
She then broke out into her song “Wish U Well” backed by a projection of her exploring her hometown spots including the local Galleria Mall. Phones rising above the crowd wasn’t a frequent sight until the performance of the hit songs including the “Music” and “The Peace.”
ear, a duo from New York, ventures deep into the world of all things electronic. Jonah Paz and Yaelle Avtan are the identities behind the eccentric band who garnered a meteoric rise in attention after their first single, “Nerves,” released in 2024. They performed this song, among a number of other hits from their latest album release “Rumspringa.”
Their performance garnered the attention of hundreds of festival guests due to their erratic and spastic form of movement while performing, a ton of headbanging on every beat made way for their occasional vocals, which delivered a smooth juxtaposition to their noisy and powerful set. The pair had a compelling amount of energy during their set, and encouraged the crowd to join in a big circle, holding hands until they ordered them to begin moshing.
With their newfound fame over the last two years, the inbound direction of ear is very exciting, and playing at such a staple festival for electronic music is undoubtedly their first step into stardom.
Zara Larsson, Swedish dance-pop singer, performed the second to last set for Sunday’s Pier stage. Over the past year Larsson has had a resurgence in popularity due to a TikTok revival of tracks “Lush Life” and “Symphony” from her older catalog.
In her resurgence, Larsson rebranded with bright, colorful y2k outfits, with set design and visuals styled similar – living inside of Lisa Frank coloring books. As the second to last set on the Pier Stage on Sunday night, Larsson was joined by an all-female band as well as four backup dancers.
This performance had no lack of props, with a sequence of Larsson driving a figurative car with a license plate that read “puss puss 97.” The phrase refers to Swedish culture, where ‘puss puss’ means ‘kiss kiss’ as a saying to loved ones on the phone.
While performing “Midnight Sun” Larsson was lifted into the air by her dancers in dolphin position while singing. Suddenly, festivalgoers began sporting above the crowd, recreating her move.
During the second half of Larsson’s performance she invites a fan on to the stage to participate in her dance to “Lush Life” and gifts a unique spray painted t-shirt for the fan.
“William, your f**king sexy,” Larsson tells the fan.
“Guess why? Cause I’m from Brazil” William responded.
This easily became a crowd favorite moment.
The fan proceeded to tell Larsson “this tan line is for you” before carefully pulling down his pants a little bit to expose a bit of his bum.
As one of her final moments before concluding with “Midnight Sun.” Larsson invites Robyn, a fellow Swedish singer who performed the night before at Portola, to sing along with her for “Puss Puss.”
Shortly after, Larsson addressed the crowd to conclude her final summer festival performance as she waved to the crowd and said “puss puss!”
