PORTALS FESTIVAL “People come to discover their next favourite band!”
Meet Asher Kenton and Sam Festenstein, the pair behind London’s most forward-thinking rock weekender.
The line-up of the 2023 Portals festival is crammed with bands from Prog’s pages. The weekender, held on May 27 and 28, will be headlined by post-rock stars And So I Watch You From Afar and Mono. Joining them at London’s EartH venue will be Nordic Giants, Maybeshewill, VLMV, Bossk, AA Williams and many more progressive rockers who, the organisers tell us, will be met with a communal and devoted atmosphere.
“It’s basically a whole bunch of music nerds trying to watch every single band they can, and occasionally stopping to eat something,” says founder Asher Kenton.
“I like to think you can turn around and talk to anyone at a Portals show,” adds his colleague, Sam Festenstein. “Everyone is there for the same reason – to listen to the same music – and has the same mentality: to explore, meet new people and discover their next favourite band.”
Kenton started Portals in 2015, while booking bands at south London bar The New Cross Inn. In need of something to fill a Sunday, he corralled a one-day bill headed by instrumental math rockers Waking Aida. “Math rock bands are important to my tastes,” he explains. “It’s the same with post-rock bands like Mono. When I saw them, it completely changed what I thought you could do with guitar music.”
That all-dayer was a success, and Kenton knew it could expand into a weekend-long extravaganza. Enter Festenstein: an events manager with whom Kenton had previously studied and played in bands with, in Liverpool. The duo overhauled Portals into a two-day, three-venue event in Tufnell Park, and this year’s move to EartH represents another leap in scope.
“Maybe one day we’ll make it a green-field festival with tens of thousands of people,” Festenstein suggests. “If we booked all the bands that applied to play, we’d have five festivals’ worth!”
“The dream is to book Tool, Mars Volta and Radiohead,” Kenton adds. “Those bands straddle all aspects of the niche music that we love and want to showcase.” MM
For tickets and details go to www.portalsrock.com