{"id":15631,"date":"2026-05-11T14:15:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T14:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/11\/portlands-outpost-of-electronic-musics-international-underground-portland-monthly\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T14:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T14:15:11","slug":"portlands-outpost-of-electronic-musics-international-underground-portland-monthly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/11\/portlands-outpost-of-electronic-musics-international-underground-portland-monthly\/","title":{"rendered":"Portland\u2019s Outpost of Electronic Music\u2019s International Underground – Portland Monthly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Portland Monthly<\/strong>
329 NE Couch Street, Suite 200
Portland, OR 97232
By Andrew Simon<\/a> <\/span> May 11, 2026 <\/span> Published in the Summer 2026<\/a> issue of Portland Monthly<\/em> <\/span>
Image: Will Matsuda<\/a>
Jasmine Beach works the door most nights at Barn\u00a0Radio. <\/span>She posts up in her signature Kangol hat and tinted glasses on SW First Avenue between Oak and Pine Streets, checking IDs as fog drifts from the club\u2019s unassuming storefront. Behind her is an outpost of electronic music\u2019s international underground and the home base of Portland\u2019s push to reconnect the genre with its Black roots<\/a>.\u00a0
\u201cWhite men have historically dominated key parts of electronic music infrastructure,\u201d Beach says, \u201cfrom promoters and venue ownership to booking networks.\u201d As the genre\u2019s mainstream popularity has grown in recent years, notions of what a club environment looks, feels, and sounds like have seemed to shrink. \u201cEven when they would open the door to other identities,\u201d Beach adds, \u201cit wasn\u2019t kept open.\u201d\u00a0
Before the pandemic, the artist-run venue and synthesizer library\u00a0S1 offered an alternative. Equal parts late-night dance club and highly curated art project, S1 was the product of a nuanced subculture. But its basement digs beneath a Hollywood-neighborhood\u00a0Rite Aid didn\u2019t last. When Beach, who is 37, discovered Barn Radio\u00a0a few years later, she saw a glimmer of what was lost when S1 closed in 2020.\u00a0
In its three short years, the club has hosted over 130 parties and welcomed artists from at least 30 countries, including South Africa, Portugal, Sweden, Colombia, and Jordan. But it didn\u2019t necessarily start with such ambitions. It began during a snowstorm in February 2023, Cole Mitchell Johnson tells me. Johnson, a 32-year-old graphic designer with a strikingly gentle affect, had rented speakers for a client party before the weather shut Portland down. \u201cWell, I have all these speakers,\u201d he remembers thinking. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be snowed in alone.\u201d He borrowed a space, threw a party for a few dozen friends, and Barn Radio<\/a> was born.\u00a0
Today, Beach and Johnson serve as its codirectors. If her presence at the door shapes the club\u2019s atmosphere, Johnson\u2019s graphic sensibility and artist curation steer its ethos. Johnson moved from Chicago to Portland in 2019 for a job with FISK, the local design agency known for its work with musicians like Paramore, Clairo, and Amin\u00e9<\/a>. The glitchy, text-based posters Johnson designs specific to each visiting DJ are central to Barn Radio\u2019s identity. They give \u201cform to the world-building and mystery of a late-night venue\u2014capturing an experience that\u2019s felt more often than explained,\u201d says FISK founder Bijan Berahimi<\/a>. In September 2025, Wieden & Kennedy hosted an exhibition of Johnson\u2019s show posters.\u00a0
Image: Will Matsuda<\/a>
Nightlife venues come and go on this block. Before it became the haunted theme bar Raven\u2019s Manor, the one-time McCormick and Schmick\u2019s down the street had a short but expensive spell as a sleek dance club called No Vacancy Lounge, bringing big-name DJs to town before closing in 2019.\u00a0
The churn reflects Portland\u2019s ongoing struggle to find itself. But the post-lockdown scramble reset the city\u2019s nightlife<\/a>. Amid empty storefronts and outdated business models, the downtown core became a laboratory for experimentation. Barn Radio is one such DIY experiment. Its ad hoc appearance\u2014it started out with an Ikea DJ booth and half-blown-out speakers\u2014and a recent GoFundMe campaign reflect the venue\u2019s lack of private investment, a reminder of its independence that points back to the genre\u2019s scrappy roots.
While electronic music\u2019s lineage is vast and spans the world, much of the modern sound can be traced to a few very influential Black DJs playing clubs in the \u201980s in Chicago and Detroit. In Chicago, Frankie Knuckles, the \u201cGodfather of House Music,\u201d popularized that genre by sampling and remixing disco records at the Warehouse\u2014an underground alternative to the era\u2019s increasingly mainstream and exclusionary discos. Techno started soon after, not 300 miles east in Detroit, when the Belleville Three\u2014DJs and school friends Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson\u2014blended Parliament-style funk and robot pop \u00e0 la Kraftwerk into a synth-heavy futuristic sound to reframe Motor City\u2019s industrial backdrop.\u00a0
\u201cWhen I\u2019m at Barn, I could\u00a0be in Lisbon or Berlin or Bushwick or Miami, but\u00a0I\u2019m in, you know, goddamn Portland.\u201d
\u201cSo much of electronic music history is Black,\u201d says Omari Jazz, a Portland-based music producer who frequently DJs at Barn Radio.\u00a0\u201cBeing able to place yourself within a narrative is important, whether you\u2019re trying to distance yourself from it or trying to be a part of it.\u201d
Across the river, Holocene, a converted warehouse in the Buckman eighborhood, remains the city\u2019s flagship dance party hub. But Holocene is truly a venue, a blank slate hosting roving dance parties and events without a central focus. Pop-up parties have the potential to expand the city\u2019s nightlife, and they often have in recent years. But one-off events can be difficult to sustain. In the wake of COVID, Portland was ready for something more permanent like Barn Radio, which offers sliding-scale tickets, occasional free parties, and an ethos that prioritizes inclusivity.
\u201cIt is not a nightclub,\u201d says Atsushi Maeda, a Japanese DJ who\u2019s played at Barn Radio. \u201cIt\u2019s a community space in the local scene.\u201d Maeda regularly travels the world DJing and has run an electronic music festival in Japan for nearly 20 years. He was struck by the creative freedom Johnson and Beach gave performers. In contrast to many clubs around the world, where artists are expected to maintain a certain tempo or play within a sonic lane, Barn Radio encourages experimentation.
\u201cIt\u2019s never really about genre alone,\u201d Beach says. \u201cIt\u2019s about\u00a0context, authorship, and whether the person playing the music\u00a0understands the lineage and the room they\u2019re in.\u201d
More than simply a place to get lost late at night in fog and lights, people attending these shows are often looking for alternatives to the city\u2019s homogenized nightlife. \u201cAs a Brazilian living in Portland, it\u2019s so special when I get to hear a set from Latin America,\u201d says Tati Frambach, a designer from Rio de Janeiro who lives in Portland and attends Barn Radio parties. \u201cIt makes me feel closer to home.\u201d
Image: Courtesy Barn Radio<\/a>
Process<\/a>, a club that opened in Southeast Portland in 2024 and hosts similar artists to Barn Radio, marks another step in the city\u2019s expanding electronic music scene. While some trace the recent rise in late-night venues to online streaming DJ sets that spiked in popularity during the pandemic, such as Boiler Room, both\u00a0local clubs transcend internet fads. They\u2019re full of real people most nights, challenging the city\u2019s reputation as early-to-bed and out of step with the global underground.
In fact, Portland is increasingly becoming a stop for artists from around the world. Among them is DJ Travella, a leading figure in singeli, the high-energy Tanzanian dance music that can surge\u00a0between 200 and 300 beats per minute (Outkast\u2019s \u201cHey Ya!\u201d is about 160 BPM). The Museum of Modern Art\u2019s experimental arm, MoMA PS1, sponsored DJ Travella\u2019s visa, a process that can be daunting for touring artists from many African nations, and hosted him for a set in August 2025. He played only three other US venues on the trip, one of which was Barn Radio. \u00a0
The club\u2019s growing list of big names also includes Slauson Malone 1, the experimental artist born Jasper Marsalis, of the storied Marsalis jazz family, and Jay Versace, the Portland-based producer and DJ known for his work with SZA; Tyler, the Creator; and Doja Cat.
\u201cWhen I\u2019m at Barn, I could be in Lisbon or Berlin or Bushwick or Miami, but I\u2019m in, you know, goddamn Portland,\u201d says Gem Nwannem, a vinyl DJ and magazine distributor. They moved to Portland from New York City in 2023, and say it wasn\u2019t easy to find similar clubs at home. While confessing they don\u2019t make it to every show, Nwannem says, \u201cI buy tickets to every single one \u2019cuz I need them to exist.\u201d\u00a0
Andrew\u00a0Simon\u00a0is the co-owner of magazine shop Chess Club, where Barn Radio cofounder Cole Mitchell Johnson has DJed.<\/em>
Q&A
06\/24\/2024<\/span> By Dalila Brent<\/a> <\/span> Illustrations by Betty Turbo<\/a> <\/span>
Music
08\/07\/2020<\/span> By Conner Reed<\/a> <\/span>
Graphic Design
08\/18\/2022<\/span> By Matthew Trueherz<\/a> <\/span>
Dance Dance Revolution
03\/23\/2026<\/span> By Rebecca Jacobson<\/a> <\/span> <\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Portland Monthly 329 NE Couch Street, Suite 200Portland, OR 97232 By Andrew Simon May 11, 2026 Published in the Summer 2026 issue of Portland Monthly Image: Will MatsudaJasmine Beach works the door most nights at Barn\u00a0Radio. She posts up in her signature Kangol hat and tinted glasses on SW First Avenue between Oak and Pine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15631","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}