Porter Robinson: Vast Horizons

A few years ago, a budding North Carolinian by the name of Porter Robinson came into our radar as we noticed his uprising progression as an artist, hailing as one of the youngest producers in the music industry. Albeit Robinson — like many aspiring musicians — had been tinkering with his art early on in his tweens, few were able to develop the extraordinary musical sense and technical maturity that he seemed like he naturally possessed. By the age of 18, this musical prodigy had already skyrocketed into international recognition and today, he is perceived to be one of US’ limelight producers, boasting numerous chart-topping and number one singles under his belt while only having release his debut, Worlds, a few months back. The self-taught virtuoso, who still is 22 years young today, was gracious enough to detail us on many close-to-heart topics. From performance difficulties to identity misconceptions from fans, from his artistic progression to constructive production tips; Robinson articulates comprehensively. Throughout the honest exchange, we came to a realization that Robinson’s flourishing successes were derived from his following traits: strong creative vision, technical mastery, sound judgment, and most of all, true humility. If you are an aspiring producer or just somebody who desires to learn from this versatile genius — this is the go-to interview. Have a fruitful read.

It’s been a few months since you released Worlds, how would you evaluate the response that it’s received?

It’s been a way, way more universally positive response from my fans than I expected. I expected a lot more of a backlash for sure, in my eyes it was such a drastic change in sound. But I just found unanimous support from fans, well I mean there’s the fan base on the fringe that go to ‘masses’, stuff that they’re calling ‘raves’ that, aren’t quite as into it but it’s definitely made me achieve my goals. I think it’s made people see me differently, and seeing me in a light that is actually truer to what I am. This is going to sound angsty, but I felt a bit misunderstood over the last couple of years, where I’d have people coming up and say “yo dude! I rolled so hard (high off ecstasy) at your set bro! *expletive* killed it!” That’s really not who I am, I’m definitely more introspective. Even when I was making the “EDM stuff” back in 2010 before it was this big thing in the U.S. it was this exercise in production, trying to throw in as many crazy bass sounds as I could which then became this massive cliché. I never approached the music from that angle of this ‘party dude’ character, that was never who I was. It feels nice that I sense that people are getting me a little better now. It really shows in conversations with folks after the show. It just feels like a massive relief, in a lot of ways.

What was the biggest challenge you were facing before and after release?

Getting the live show ready was really, really hard. I had to go through the whole record, unpack all the songs into their respective parts and make stems of everything. Get the drums out, get the bass out, lead out, vocals out etc. and I think for a lot of artists that’s actually really easy like if you worked in Ableton but based on my workflow, the best analogy I can describe it with is trying to take a finished frosted cake, and get the eggs out. That’s what it’s like trying to get the drums out of one of my songs. But I needed all this stuff to prepare for the live show, to make new versions of all the songs, to make them playable live, taking out instruments and running multi-tracks to them so at any point while the song’s playing I can take the drums out, or run the vocals by themselves. But that’s just the way that I write music, I just make it really hard on myself. It took five months of daily work to get that show ready. But at the same time I was taking those stems and making whole new versions of songs for the fans to experience a whole new sound. Then there’s the visuals which took months and months of effort. Overall it was a massive challenge but ultimately worthwhile, it’s been so fun for me to tour this thing.

In regard to how popular how electronic music has become, how would you describe the point to which it’s at?

It’s kind of hard for me to say why it’s doing so well, I think one major factor is that if I was to go to a societal level is that the barriers to entry for making music are the very lowest for electronic music producers. Anyone can download the software, get the cracks, get the torrents, anyone that’s computer literate can start writing music with the same tools as the most famous electronic musicians in the world. Which is really something, and I think that’s been true for at least six or seven years that’s given rise to this movement of young and hungry electronic music producers that live and breath for this stuff. I think that electronic music overall sounds better, and louder. It’s a preference thing, for sure, but like, when the people that are mixing the record are the same people that are writing the record (e.g. choosing the instruments, choosing the melodies), and then doing all the mixing/mastering; that’s one person’s concise vision. It doesn’t have to go through all these steps of sending it to an engineer and trying to get different mix downs and/or going through different mastering engineers. I just think that electronic music represents one person’s complete vision, which is an asset. It’s like how I think about Kanye West it’s like ‘this is exactly what you wanted to do.’ There are no compromises, and that makes an awesome product and I think electronic music enables that. There’s other factors behind its popularity like you can look at dance music tending to do well during economic recession, and during times of economic prosperity sad/slower music does better. If you look at the median tempo of songs on the radio; there are higher tempos during economic decline and lower tempos during economic prosperity. That might partially explain the rise of EDM around the recession of 2008. But it’s so hard to pin it down; it could’ve gone a million different ways. But I’m very happy, I love electronic music, it’s my favourite shit in the world. I’m happy it’s having its time to shine.

What is the biggest misconception the public/media have about you?

I think the biggest misconception that surround me are controversies that happened but I never want to talk about them because it just brings up awful stuff again, and it’s just better to just let that stuff fade away. But I feel I’ve made a massive effort on the internet to help people give a sense of what I’m about. I never let my managers post shit for me on Twitter etc. If there was something that was really bothering me I would be on the internet trying to clear it up. That’s a cool question but I don’t think I have an awesome answer for whatever reason. I’ll have to brainstorm on that.

Well, you can just say that there’s a misconception about you. Like what they’re seeing is exactly what you are?

I think so, I feel I can be a little humorless on the internet, maybe. I don’t try to make funny observations. When I first met my girlfriend, she thought I was way sillier than I was on the internet but that’s not really interesting and I still crack jokes on Tumblr or whatever. I feel like people know me pretty well. But I like that question, I would love to hear a lot of my favorite musicians answers to it.

How do you select your collaboration partners?

My dream collaborations at the moment are of course, Kanye West, and the ridiculous one that no one can get, Daft Punk – my favorite musicians of all time. Then there’s Kyary Pamyu Pamyu or her producer which this is guy named Yasutaka Nakata. She’s a J-Pop star, so fucking good, like, I was getting teary eyed listening to it this morning on the way from Heathrow (Airport). Her producer (Nakata) is this master of crazy, pseudo-cutesy, really surreal up-tempo J-Pop where the verses are really nice, cute chords and then the pre-chorus are these crazy jazz chords then it goes to all these melodies that you’d never expect. Then the chorus is this nonsensically happy, beautiful melodies. The music videos are so perfectly art-directed, the album covers are awesome. It’s just so good. So Kyary Pamyu Pamyu is another dream collaboration of mine. For years I really wanted to work with Stars, which is this Canadian indie band. The vocalist, Amy Millan features on my song “Divinity,” and she’s also on this other song that I haven’t released yet. So that was really sweet for me, like I was nervous around her and she was just drinking wine, being funny. So not what I expected, really chill. But I also don’t like seeding control, I really like to say what’s what on the songs that I work on. I don’t think I’m a great collaborator to be honest, I really want shit to go my way. That could be an asset in some ways and not in others. But overall I think I’m not a good collaborator.

How would you evaluate the current culture of electronic music and where do you see it in the next five years?

The thing that I’m seeing already in the U.S. is this very clear cleavage of people who were listening to EDM when it was just breaking three or four years ago when all the new artists like me, Skrillex, Madeon and all those producers who were in that little circle – I feel like people who were listening to that music then, are going through this change where people are either going fully towards the craziest, big room, main stage stuff and are really getting into that and I feel that there’s other people that have started to see that as ‘uncool.’ Part of those people’s identity’s now is that they’re listening to Disclosure or Flume but they also don’t hate the energetic stuff like Jack Ü. I feel like the culture of electronic music in the U.S. has come under a little more scrutiny from the fans that are now trying to figure out what’s good and what’s not.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

I’m trying to live in the moment and figure out what’s exciting to what and me I stand for right now. I feel weird because for the last two years there’s always been something big for me on the horizon I’ve had an album about to drop, first live tour and now those have happened, I feel kind of purposeless for the first time in years which is a very vulnerable, scary feeling for me. All I really want to be doing is being at home writing music because I have nothing. Which is fucking scary. I want to be writing shit right away. But I’m happy to bring this show to places that haven’t seen it before. Outside side the venue I was meeting kids from Madrid (show was in London, UK), guys from Ireland saying they wanted to come to London to see the show and it sold out which is so tight.

Tell us about the process of your live shows? I’ve heard that it’s a combination of live instruments, singing and djing?

I have every song bounced into different multi tracks so I have the drums separated from the vocals, separated from the synths which enables me to do some cool rhythmic drop outs and affecting each one differently, changing levels. If there’s a lead sound, 99% of the time I’m playing it on keys. I’ve got two synthesisers for adding cool textures and arpeggios. And I’m singing, which is what I think people understand the best – when I’m singing on the record. Sometimes even when I’m not, I’m in there doing my vocal parts. So it’s definitely referencing the live shows of people like Daft Punk or Justice where it’s all their own music and there’s this big focus on the first moment when people hear the first second of a song they know and there’s a big scream. That’s what I live for. But I wanted to push it a little further where I was playing parts, singing, giving a bit more of a live, bandy feel.

Do you feel the new set up of your shows is what you wanted to put across from when you started out or has it been a progression of your artistic impression/coming of age?

I definitely think it was a progression, I was not thinking about doing a live show when I first started touring because the first time I was touring I had one song out and there was this dude from Portland who said “hey do you want to come play my show for 400 bucks.” I was 18, in high school, I’m like “oh my God, hell yeah” let me travel, and figure out how to DJ. I never knew how to DJ, my first time was, in front of a crowd. That’s the thing about me, being 18 and I had a song that blew up out of nowhere (“Say My Name”) and suddenly I’ve been thrust into this thing where I have this public profile. I had no ambitions, no career trajectory, no plans and I definitely had to assemble the plane while it was flying. I think it took two and a half years before I decided that Worlds is what I wanted to do. Being on the road made me ask if this whole thing is what I stood for, and in a lot of the cases the answer was ‘no.’ But at the same time I will say that I fucking love DJing because for me, it’s not this perfect medium of artistic expression but, it is the funnest shit, ever. It’s like when somebody hands you the auxiliary cable in the car and you get to pick the soundtrack for the trip. That’s what DJing’s like for me, it’s so fun. Is it the thing I’m proudest of? I don’t think so but I really enjoy it and that’s why I still finish some of these shows sometimes and say “OK, after party – let’s go” or just DJ in the green room. Because it’s just wicked fun. But this show is something I hatched in my mind about two years ago. That wasn’t from the start. I’m 22 now and first started touring when I was 18, it took a while for me to figure it out.

What does Porter Robinson like listening to on a day to day basis?

One of my favorite artists at the moment is opening for me, this guy from London – Bo En, the best way I can describe it is super-Japanese video game music, Japanese contemporary pop, sort-of trap-inspired. Aesthetically it’s perfect, cute but sophisticated. He’s one of my favorite artists, and it was spur of the moment that he was going to play today. I just hit him up and he said he was in town and was like “yeah let’s do it.” I’ve never seen his show before but I’m excited to see it. But otherwise, I’ve heard so many names for it but I like listening to post-trap/future bass, whatever people are calling it. I enjoy Flume, Deon Custom, and Point Point. The more melodic element of trap – I think that there’s a premium on experimentation on that little genre but it’s still loud and I like that. It still fucking knocks, not just weird, ambient, psychedelic shit it actually has a purpose. I’ve been listening to a lot of that. I would let you go through my iPod but there’s Michelle Branch and Vanessa Carlton on there (laughs).

Finally, any tips for up and coming producers?

It really depends on what level they’re at; for guys who’ve made music for two or three years, the biggest mistake I see these guys make is trying to put all this effort into the hustle, trying to make it, trying to be this ‘struggle artist’ who posts their Soundcloud everywhere. I see these artists that want to ‘make it’ and I almost have very little hope for those artists because their priority, clearly, is not to make good music, but to be successful. I just don’t see that working for up and coming guys. You need the passion, direction and some real strong ideas, those are the guys that I see blow up. I feel like the guys doing really good nowadays are either one of two ways; either take the trend and do it way better than everyone else – those guys do good. Or, really stand out and do something super unique that just blows everyone’s head off. But overall you need to focus on the craft, don’t let yourself think that you’re good. I feel that people need to be way harder on themselves – I am. Focus on getting really good at music then everything falls into place from there. But I don’t know, it depends on the artist; there’s some guys that are killing it who are making really good music and are blowing up and there’s guys who are blowing up who aren’t making good music so there’s no golden formula but I think the most gratifying way is making music you love and to be succeeding with it. That’s the career that I admire the most and I feel people should aspire towards.