Second Sky was a music festival backed and curated by Porter Robinson. The announcement of this event was completely unexpected, and a massive undertaking for Porter and his team. To be honest, I’d never been to a music festival and was normally uninterested in the idea. They’re really expensive and sound exhausting, but I was sold on a Porter Robinson festival that lasted a single day. The idea of the festival was for Porter to just host a music festival featuring his personal favorite artists, and it shows. There was a decent amount of variety in the lineup from the bassy tones of G Jones to the light, poppy sound of Kero Kero Bonito. Tickets for the event sold out so quickly, the announced they would rerun the festival for a second day in a row to try and get more tickets, and as someone who couldn’t get tickets for day 1 this was a massive blessing. However, due to a scheduling conflict, G Jones would be unable to play the 2nd day, so a mystery guest was announced and kept secret until the day of the festival.

Come the day of the festival, me and my group head out to catch the BART up to Oakland. The festival opened with a quick 30 minute Virtual Self set, an alias of Porter Robinson. He did this to encourage people to show up early in the day to catch the whole lineup rather than show up later for the headliners which worked pretty well! As the day progressed, there were still no announcements on who would be the secret guest replacing G Jones. Come the time of the set, Porter gets on stage himself and says they couldn’t find anyone, and instead presented someone wearing the mascot suit for the festival, saying the person inside the costume was a good DJ and apologized for disappointment. This was obviously an act, so with bated breath the audience waited for some sort of reveal, and as soon as Porter pressed play in the CDJ for the mascot, the costume came off to reveal the surprise guest was Skrillex! I’ve never seen a crowd compress so fast. Anyone and everyone who was relaxing in the back suddenly picked up their things and ran into the pit to hear this set.

Skrillex played a fantastic set, and I felt so lucky to have been there. I had never seen him live and I finally got to see him for the first time as a surprise guest! Madeon followed up shortly after with a set showcasing music from his upcoming album before the festival closed with Porter performing his WORLDS Live set for the first time in several years, with new live versions of songs that weren’t featured in the original WORLDS Live tour. Overall it was a fantastic festival, with the only downside being the sunburns I got for being stupid enough to not use sunscreen!