Kat Says: “My 9 Favorite Things At Portola 2023”
Skrillex sign-language interpreter, Underwold's knees and more fun.
Are you enjoying Kat Scrawls? Do you think your friends would enjoy it? Please consider joining the paid subscription tier to support my work, or sharing this newsletter with a friend who likes good tunes and silly essays. As always, please feel free to respond to this email and share your thoughts with me—or “like” it, leave a comment, and Tweet it or something. Just spread the love and holler back, I’m always here for you ;)
Hey Friends!
Fun Fact: Out of the entire 30 days of September, I only spent 11 at home—and among all those days, only one weekend.
I keep saying “2024 is my year of no,” because I mentally, physically, spiritually and financially just can not continue to travel the way I have these past few weeks/months/years. Like, don’t get me wrong. Adventure is dope, and obviously I am addicted to the road, but to quote the great Dude, “this aggression will not stand, man.”
All that aside, I did choose on the evening of Wednesday, Aug. 27, to #fullsend YOLO myself to San Francisco for one more weekend of party and bullshit. I was lying in bed and saw yet another comment posted to my Portola 2022 vlog. Someone had just been hyped up for the second-annual Bay Area electronic festival, and I was like “maaaaaan, who am I kidding? Of course I want to go!”
I used up all the dang air miles I had left and booked a quick flight out Friday so that I could boogie down with some of my besties to the magnificent sounds of Skrillex, Nelly Furtado, Underworld, Sam Gellaitry, TEED, The Dare and more.
The event was hosted once again at Pier 80 on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, and I flew home to Florida at 10:45 p.m. PT on Monday, Oct. 2.
I barely slept, I walked 30k+ steps a day, and I ate California burritos from Senor Sisig not once but twice during my four-day trip. I took a red-eye back (with a connection in Atlanta) and still feel like I’m catching up on my brain cells, but was the whole ordeal worth it?
YOU FUCKIN’ BET YOUR ASS.
Portola 2023 was a whirlwind experience and one helluva blast. I saw some great music, laughed my butt off with friends, and spent $198 on alcoholic beverages without ever feeling decidedly drunk…somehow?
That last part was probably a mistake, but it’s too late to cry tears of regret now. Stimulate the local economy, I always say.
Anyway, these were all the parts of Portola 2023 that made the last-minute experience totally worth it. If I could do it all over again, I would indeed.
San Francisco in Autumn
I lived in the Bay Area for nearly two years during COVID, and I’ve spent another cumulative two-ish years just visiting the place, and I can honestly say, there’s nothing quite like San Francisco in the fall. The weather is just *chef’s kiss*, with an average high of 71 F and a low of 55. Either it’s crisp air and clear skies, or you’re greeted by San Fran’s meteorological mascot, Karl the Fog, and in any case, there’s something magical in the air.
I was rockin’ cute overalls and short-sleeves during the day and made sure to pack my sweatshirt in my backpack for nightfall. There was a bit of rain on Saturday, but it was gentle and refreshing, which is almost the only type of rain you get in the Bay. All in all, the weather that weekend was perfect, and it was once again brilliant looking out at downtown San Francisco from the Portola main stage.
Portola Made Improvements
Just as with its inaugural year, Portola’s 2023 lineup was super-stacked with must-see acts representing the past, present and future of the electronic underground and its pop-leaning offshoots. Scheduling conflicts are a real concern at this event, and tough decisions had to be made (sorry, Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul. I’ll see you one day).
As my friends and I looked over the schedule, we noticed a ton of grade-A acts at the Crane Stage.
“Fuck, that’s gonna suck,” I said, because last year, the Crane Stage was a tent tucked into the back right of the festival. That’s where Fatboy Slim played, and it was basically impossible to get inside it any time after 4 p.m. “How are we supposed to see Underworld there? Idk, might have to like, skip that stage a bit.”
BUT I WAS WRONG! The Crane Stage was given proper status with a slight pivot on a diagonal and an open-air concept that meant anyone could catch a glimpse of TEED’s sultry-shy stage presence and feel connected to Bassment Jaxx’ mind-melting genre-hopper of a set from anywhere in the vicinity. It was a complete game-changer, and I found myself hanging out at that stage more than any other. At least $100 of the alcohol charges I racked up came from that VIP area. What can I say? The vibes were immaculate.
The Warehouse Lights
Another solid upgrade came at the Warehouse stage, which was already my favorite part of Portola 2022 and somehow became even more majestic. First of all, they moved the stage from the front to the back and adjusted to create a wider entrance, getting rid of that weird spiraling line that had ravers freaking out that they wouldn’t get inside in time to see Bicep’s headline set in 2022 (indeed, a lot of people didn’t get to see Fred Again.. last year, simply because the Warehouse was at capacity).
This year’s set-up was also wacky with the lights. Gone were the panels of LEDs on either side of the warehouse walls, replaced by incredible squares of light and smartly placed disco balls that exploded with refracted neon whenever the seemingly 7,000 lasers hit the mirrored surfaces. I spent a lot less time in the warehouse this year, for whatever reason, but the 20 minutes I did see of DJ Koze was something-fuckin-else entirely. It was a true disco paradise and nothing short of it.
VIP Was Worth It
Most of the time when people ask me if they should get VIP for a festival, I’m like “well, how much do you value slightly cleaner bathrooms?” It’s usually a fool’s errand, in my experience, but this year’s Portola VIP was a step above that made my experience extra special.
Full disclosure: my comped press ticket included VIP access, so I did not pay the $600 price tag for a two-day VIP pass. I personally think $600 is a lot of fucking money for a festival, and I would not be able to afford that for any-fucking-thing—BUT, when you consider that it’s only $260 more than the two-day GA price point (taking first-tier pricing into account), I think it might be worth it.
The only time VIP really came into play was at the Crane Stage and main Pier Stage, but the comfortable side-stage access got my friends and I waaaay closer to the action, plus gave us the opportunity to make use of private VIP bathrooms, food and beverage bars and even a VIP merch table. There was a full-on restaurant with seats and menus at the main stage, and I don’t think I ever waited more than 10 minutes to pee. It was fucking brilliant, and it felt like there was space to breathe. As a middle-aged raver with achy bones and an overactive bladder, that just can’t be undervalued.
Underworld
Speaking of being a middle-aged raver, I have never been more inspired than I was watching Underworld’s 66-year-old Karl Hyde skip and jumping jack his way across the Crane Stage during the legendary U.K. duo’s headline performance Saturday night. These dudes were delivering more energy than artists a third of their age, and the music was twice as invigorating. I mean, what could be more euphoric than the blissful synth stabs of “Two Months Off” roaring through the San Francisco autumn night? With your friends! Finally catching a buzz from your third double vodka and Red Bull??! It doesn’t hurt that Trainspotting is my favorite movie, so any chance to rock out to “Dark & Long (Dark Train)” and "Born Slippy” in a live setting brings a certain kind of full-circle perfection to my lifestyle.
Nelly Furtado
How much do you love Nelly Furtado? That’s a trick question, because you can’t truly understand how much you love her until you see her live. You might think to yourself “the woman who does the ‘Like A Bird’ song?” “‘Promiscuous Girl’ and that whole Nelly Furtado / Timbaland era was great, but it’s not my whole personality or anything.” Wrong! Nelly Furtado is a wholesome treasure and a man-eating witch with the vocal cords of a goddess and the stage presence of a precious little girl giving a ballet recital—which is all to say, she’s one of the best pop icons we have.
My friends and I predicted that her set at Portola on Saturday might be the sleeper-attack of the whole weekend, and we were right! She dropped hit after funky hit, working the crowd with cute asides leading us all in a teary-eyed sing-along of her breakthrough anthem that made her admit “this is why I do music. Thank you all.” She even brought out Dom Dolla to perform their recent tune, “Eat Your Man.” We stan for Ms. Furtado now, and we hope she eats all the men she needs to continue thriving as an age-less wonder for many decades to come. We’d also love more hits with Timb, which do seem to be on the way!
Kavinsky “Stress” Mosh Pit
Shocking no one, I made sure to come out heavy in support of the one Ed Banger artist on the Portola 2023 lineup. I’ve never had the pleasure of catching Kavinsky behind the decks before, and I expected to bathe in flashing police siren synths and anti-hero basslines. I did not expect this dude to melt my brain with a powerhouse freight train of hard-hitting electro jams and metal-infused techno. I mean, Idk why I wouldn’t expect it, but I was pleasantly surprised.
My friend Zach and I were having a great time, headbanging with the raver girls next to us who gave us gum and googly-eyed rings and poppers. He dropped “Satisfaction” by Benny Benassi and people went fucking bananas. By the time Kavinsky dropped SebastiAn’s remix of “Killing in the Name,” I lost the ability to speak intelligible sentences (not because of the poppers, mind you, but because of the mind-numbing jams). Then he played “Stress” just Justice, and a pit opened in the center of the crowd. Zach and I didn’t speak. We just high-tailed it to the pit. It was glorious. Then Kavinsky dropped “Gare du Nord” by Carte Blanche and the SebastiAn remix of his track “Testarosa” and everyone kept looking at me like I was insane but it’s like, c’mon! It’s Ed Banger! We have to go insane!
He closed out his set by playing “Night Call” in full. He cut the music and everyone started howling like we were wolves under a full moon. It was very great. Then he left the decks, only to come back later and pantomime a bunch of silly walks while bowing and waving and blowing kisses at us and such. It was so freakin’ cute, I can’t wait to see Kavinsky again!
2ManyDJs
Right after the French DJ took his final adorable bow, the Belgian Dewaele brothers took the Ship Tent stage. Zach and I had prime front-row positioning because the “Stress” moshpit spit us out front and center. 2ManyDJs were set to deliver their “Under The Covers” set, which is where they play audio tracks paired with animated visuals of each song’s cover art. The first time I saw them do that was at Ultra 2012, and that might have been my favorite version because they played “Callgurls” by Handbraekes (Mr. Oizo and Boys Noize), but this set was fantastic, as always.
The stagehands were running around for the first 20 minutes of the set as if there was some technical difficulty with the visuals, but the audio never went out, so it didn’t really bother me at all. They dropped Beastie Boys and ABBA, The Stooges and Marie Davidson, Technotronic’s “Pump Up The Jam” and New Order’s “Blue Monday,” the latter of which was unceremoniously and suddenly cut short in order to finish with The Champs’ 1958 classic “Tequila.” It was ridiculous, and it worked! Which is why you go see 2ManyDJs in the first place.
Skrillex
On the opposite spectrum of sleeper sets, I was fully expecting Skrillex’ Sunday headliner to be over-the-top and fantastic, but I still was not fully prepared for the onslaught of cut-up beats, mishmash sonic references and hair-raising screech-wubs that shook the Earth during his hour-and-a-half closing set. My friends and I were gonna try to watch some Roisin Murphy, but the Pier Stage audio was turned up so loud for Skrill that there was almost no point being at any other stage. Thousands were huddled around his sparsely decorated set-up. You couldn’t even see him most of the time, which was cool because it left you to dance around with your friends, doing weird dinosaur dance moves instinctively to the whiplash rhythms and sudden drops of recognizable vocal samples.
No genre of music was left unturned. It felt like Skrillex was walking us through an ADHD playthrough of his Spotify Liked Songs playlist. He kept working in snippets of his old tunes, giving us a great rendition of “Bangarang” about an hour in, while continuously working “Cinema” in and out of the set. We got new cuts form the new albums including “Inhale/Exhale” and “A Street I Know.” Of course we got “Rumble” and “A Fine Day” and “Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites.” We got his remix of “Humble” and his Rick Ross collab “Purple Lamborghini,” as well as his hits with Justin Bieber and Poo Bear. It was awesome to see how the many shades of Skrillex all bleed together under the umbrella of caustic funk, and I am SO STOKED to see him again in a matter of weeks at III Points in Miami. Also, S/O the sign language interpreters that tried to make sense of the set lol.
Me and my frieeeends
FRIENDS
Of course I lost my shit when Skillex suddenly played Justice’s “We Are Your Friends,” followed by his song with Porter Robinson, “Still Here (With The Ones That I Came With).” It was a beautiful and fitting way to end the set and the weekend, because it felt like a friend-filled adventure from start to finish.
It was because of my friends and the silly times a festival promised that I dragged my ass back across the country for one more four-day fling. I got to see even more friends once I was there, friends from Los Angeles who didn’t even think they were gonna make it until the last moment (looking at you, Molly), and friends from the Internet, and friendly strangers in the crowd, etc. etc. My friend Zach had tickets to see 2ManyDJs perform at a Portola-aligned afterparty Sunday night, but we decided to just go back to our friend Jamie’s house and watch A Cross The Universe and Part Of The Weekend Never Dies on YouTube instead, because 1) that was the only energetic concept our bodies had room for after that Skrillex set and 2) there’s nothing quite like being a musical dumb-dumb with your friends, coming down on the couch after blowing your mental load at a perfect start-of-autumn music festival.
Anyway, I’m retiring from cross-country flights until 2024, maybe even until 2025—or until they drop the Portola 2024 lineup. We’ll have to wait and see.
You know what’s wild? There might not even be a Portola 2024 because, for the second year in a row, the entire Easy Bay called and complained about the noise rattling their windows from across the water LOL. The organizers say they turned the sound down, but they 100 percent turned it all the way up for Skrillex and Eric Prydz during the headline sets. It was too much tbh, but I’m hopeful Portola sticks it out and remains in its home by the pier, because it is a very cool setting and situation, and it would be sad if it ended.
Here’s to hoping!
Coming Up
Stay tuned, kids! The third installment of the Kat Drawls podcast is coming this week. It’ll be another interview from my archives, but I’m not sure which one yet. You have to be a paid-tier subscriber to listen to it. You can join today with the button below and gain immediate access to my archive interviews with Moby and Disclosure :) Doesn’t that sound fun?!
Absolutely Necessary
(This is the part where I share songs that are so good, they’re absolutely necessary to listen to. That’s it. That’s the bar.)
I made two Spotify playlists for this section that you can follow: one weekly playlist updated with just the new stuff every week, and one cumulative playlist that will host every song I pick ever (until Spotify tells me it's full). Check them out! I made them for you—and me, but mostly you.
Here are this week’s five highlights:
Pusher - “For A Low Low Price”
My buddy Pusher descends deeper into late-stage Capitalism madness on his recently released album King of the Moon. The concept LP tells the story of a 1%-er who destroys the ecosystem in his quest to be the richest of them all. It’s fiction, but it’s not that far from truth, and Pusher delivers it with his signature brand of shiny synthpop and further portrays the narrative in a series of music videos that are somehow fun even as they’re maniacal. Get the whole project on Bandcamp.
ATRIP - “Shake”
This London-based producer is only at the start of his career, but he’s caught my ear with his upbeat grooves and hypnotic house rhythms. He’s quickly becoming one of my faves, and this tune comes from a recent double-sided single on Diplo’s Higher Ground label.
Molly Otto - “Only If I Had To”
I first met Ms. Molly during my Kat Calls: Lamorn interview where she brought her spunky energy to the chat. She’s Lamorn’s romantic partner and musical peer, and she recently opened up for his North American tour. I’ve been following her own releases ever since, and I’ve just got to highlight the daydreamy haze of “Only If I Had To.” The synth-driven vocal single has the kind of cool-air vibes of my college-era indie dance favorites. Molly is so talented, and I’m excited to keep getting to know her catalog.
Mija - “I Wanna Be A Big Star” Feat. Cakes Da Killa, Wreckno
Ballroom is one of my all-time favorite corners of the electronic music world, and Mija has always been a superstar in my eyes. The independent artist releases and owns the rights to all her music, and that frees her up to take a lot of adventurous choices. She’s ventured out of the house music realm and creates as much in the visual dimension as she does the sonic sphere, and her latest EP No Rules celebrates her “fk a genre” ethos as well as the queer community. This tune features two of my fave electro-rappers and a handful of samples from the ballroom dancer scene.
Poolside - “We Could Be Falling In Love”
I had the pleasure of working on Poolside’s bio for this project, and the guy is far more interesting than you could imagine. I might release the first of our two chats, which chronicles his 30-year career as a mover and shaker behind the scenes, as a podcast. Maybe this week? Hmm, would you wanna hear that?! It’s a great chat. Anyway, this is a great tune, from his recently released album Blame It All On Love. I’m hoping I get to catch him on tour sometime, because he’s got a full band with him, and it’s probably amazing, but he’s not coming to Florida at this time. He is coming to Austin, Dallas and Houston in the coming days, though!
Okay, friends! That’s it for now. Keep your eyes peeled for the incoming podcast, and for exciting Kat Calls announcements :) Hint: the next guest is someone in this list of highlighted songs. Take a guess who!
Thanks for tuning into my newsletter. Listen to the playlists on Spotify. One is updated weekly with all the songs from each edition. The other is cumulative with all the updates ever!