Porter Robinson has had his hands in so many buckets of dance music. The North Carolina producer started off in the Electro and Dubstep worlds, sharing the stage amongst EDM […]
Porter Robinson has had his hands in so many buckets of dance music. The North Carolina producer started off in the Electro and Dubstep worlds, sharing the stage amongst EDM goliaths like Skrillex, Zedd, Madeon, Knife Party, and Dillon Francis. A few years later, he unveiled his atmospheric debut album, “Worlds”.
Even today, “Worlds” is a still top contender for most EDM fans’ favorite electronic album. The twelve-track cohesive effort brought listeners into a realm Porter had created for us and introduced the dance music world to some of his biggest tunes like “Sad Machine” and “Sea Of Voices”.
Fast forward even more, to early 2020. Porter announces his sophomore album and “Worlds” follow up and all chaos erupts. We are then graced with five distinct singles that give us a taste of the next soundscape Porter wants to lead us through, in my opinion, each of them more impressive than the one released prior to it.
Today, we rejoice. Seven years after taking us into his immersive, renowned “Worlds” album, we finally have its follow-up and Porter’s second full-length project, “Nurture”.
Recently, Porter tweeted that “If Worlds was a third person look, Nurture is the first person look” into his creative mind. Just as cohesive as “Worlds”, just more pop-driven, this sophomore album is another epic journey of a project. Utilizing his own vocals as both male and female parts in multiple songs, creating soundscapes that are just as entrancing as his past works yet again. What can’t this man do?
The intro tune “Lifelike”, draws you into the project, creating a tranquil soundscape to top the album. After two of the previous releases singles is “Wind Tempos”. This one shoots euphoria through each and every part of your body. Pounding chords start the track, eventually morphing into an all-out paino ballad. This tune could score a Miyazaki film, the Japanese animator well known for classic films like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke.
Porter had this to say about “Wind Tempos”, which he shared with Apple Music in his exclusive interview:
“If there’s one artist who affected my worldview more than any other, it’s this Japanese pianist named Masakatsu Takagi. He’s my hero. He did the score for one of my favorite movies, Wolf Children. That helped me understand that all the beauty and emotion I was trying to create through music didn’t need to come from these otherworldly dreamscapes; it could be intimate. Well, when we were in Japan, he invited me and my girlfriend to stay in his home in Hyogo. He lives in a village of like eight people and his house is covered in pianos. When he played for me, it was hard not to bawl. At the end of the trip, he gave me a disc file of Japanese ambient music from the early 2000s. I hadn’t heard of any of it, but he knew it’d be my thing. Not only did it inspire ‘Wind Tempos’ but I wound up throwing in this tiny sample of him playing a toy piano. It’s super distorted, almost unrecognizable. I emailed him to see if I could give him credit on the song—just a little way of recognizing how much he’d influenced me. He agreed.” – Porter Robinson on “Wind Tempos”
There are multiple 8-bit influences in this album, something Porter has tinkered with in the past. Those come most notably on “do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do”, a song that effortlessly blends the classic memory with Porter’s production prowess.
The one feature of the album comes on the second to last track, “Unfold”. Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs lends both his voice and his production chops to the tune, which mesh perfectly with Porter’s ethereal stylings.
“This is the only true collaboration on the album, and it came about because I’ve always loved TEED’s music. When we got into the studio to write and record, he started telling me how much he loved ‘Sea of Voices’ from my last album, Worlds, and how he wished he’d written it, so I started sketching a soundscape that evoked it a little bit. Then, to make the song a good fit for Nurture, we decided to have him sing on it—actually we sort of sing together. It was a whirlwind. For a while, I had this song early on in the tracklist because it presented some variety, but as I kept working on it, I was like, ‘No, this is an end-of-album moment. If I’m going to have this epic wall-of-sound thing, it needs to come towards the end.’” – Porter Robinson on “Unfold”
Porter will also be hosting the second edition of his Secret Sky livestream festival, tomorrow, Saturday April 24th. The event is co-sponsored by Brownies and Lemonade and the team behind Coachella, Goldenvoice events. The lineup is stacked with some of Porter Robinson’s personal favorite artists and boasts huge names like Boys Noize, Baauer, REZZ, Wave Racer, and loads more.
What was your favorite song from the new album? Let us know down below in the comments!
Follow the HIHF team on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to keep up with fresh tunes, merch giveaways, exclusive mixes and interviews, and so much more!
2 Comments »