How Is the Portola Lineup Designed? The Festival’s Founder on His ‘Mad Scientist’ Approach

“Every festival booker has their ain process,” says Danny Bell, the laminitis and booker of San Francisco’s Portola. “Mine is decidedly much huffy scientist-y than different people’s.”

Bell’s metaphorical laboratory is simply a spreadsheet, which helium begins tinkering with a twelvemonth earlier the festival itself. The expanse allows Bell to spot “all the antithetic looks astatine once,” helium says. “You person your wealth grid, your mock acceptable times, your poster.” He’s made algorithms that fto him signifier it by an artist’s subgenre, gender, contention and location country. There’s 1 designed astir erstwhile the prima sets and erstwhile there’s afloat dark. He works to prime a radical of artists who are improbable to play immoderate of the aforesaid tracks doubly implicit the weekend.

“Can you bash it quicker?” Bell, the SVP of endowment astatine Goldenvoice, asks rhetorically portion talking to Billboard over Zoom from his bureau successful San Francisco. “For sure. There’s astir apt a overmuch simpler way, but I bash it similar this. I privation to marque definite to person each these antithetic visualizations due to the fact that this worldly is is important. It each works together.”

From these datasets yet look the lineup and acceptable times for Portola, which since its 2022 debut has go a dance festival circuit standout for putting artists who helped make the dance/electronic genre alongside galore of the moment’s astir indispensable stars and emerging artists. Every twelvemonth Bell besides reserves a acceptable clip for a popular icon, a abstraction that successful 2025 belongs to Christina Aguilera, who Bell promises volition execute “banger aft banger.”

While Portola has enactment a full big of large names successful beforehand of the 40,000-person assemblage that gathers astatine the festival tract astatine San Francisco’s Pier 80 (past headliners person included Flume, The Chemical Brothers, Eric Prydz, Skrillex, Rüfüs du Sol and Justice), this twelvemonth puts an particularly dense accent connected “showcasing the legends and pioneers of the country and immoderate of the astir influential radical the past 30 years,” Bell says. “This lineup is simply a existent ode to to wherever the existent sounds and authorities of physics euphony came from.”

He’s not being hyperbolic. The fest this play (Sept. 20-21) volition unpack the power of the ’90s epoch U.K. underground via sets from Underworld, The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers, each of whom bent physics euphony to harder, darker and much aggravated shapes during their heydays. There volition besides beryllium U.S. artists whose enactment functioned arsenic inflection points for the improvement of indie creation and creation punk — namely LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture and Moby. The Rapture’s show comes towards the commencement of a reunion tour happening 15 years aft the NYC group’s past headlining run. Meanwhile Moby, who hasn’t toured the U.S. extensively successful years, volition execute with a live set and tally done overmuch of his 1999 LP Play, an medium whose prolific syncing helped present physics euphony to a procreation of young radical surviving acold from clubland.

These acts are matched by respective of the moment’s cardinal country stars, with the lineup’s different large font names being Peggy Gou, Dom Dolla, Mau P and Chris Lake and Chris Lorenzo playing arsenic Anti Up.

“We present person fans who’ve been heavy successful the genre for 15-plus years, but 2010, 2011 and 2012 were the aboriginal days of physics euphony being fashionable successful the U.S.,” says Bell, who successful this epoch was booking shows for HARD successful Los Angeles. “Back past everyone was conscionable learning astir these artists for the archetypal time. No 1 knew if Carl Cox was a caller enactment oregon a bequest act.”

But with the radical who got into creation euphony successful this epoch present staring down mediate age, “people person had capable clip to excavation deeper into the past and truly recognize who the pioneers were and wherever these sounds came from,” says Bell. “That’s allowed acts similar The Chemical Brothers and Underworld to person a stronger and larger U.S. fanbase than they had before.”