Photo by Alexander Jacob
Porter Robinson! Where do I start with this kid? Hailing from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the young prodigy has had a skyrocketing and hard-working career thus far, achieving what most aspiring producers can only dream of at his age. His approach to Electronic Dance Music is a fresh and revitalizing one that has most certainly enriched the dance industry from day one. His jolting productions speak for themselves, landing top spots all throughout Beatport’s Electro-House charts, ultimately clinching him a tremendous amount of devoted fans. Porter’s overall commitment to his DJ sets have rewarded him by allowing him to play on the worlds biggest stage of festivals like Electric Zoo, Ultra Music Festival and Electric Daisy Carnival where he has gained the support of well known and established producers like Tiesto, Deadmau5, Wolfgang Gartner and a heap of others. With a fair amount of surprises waiting for us in 2012, you can expect that he won’t be stopping his chaotic grind anytime soon. Since this upstanding artist will be invading the Australian waters come March, playing alongside Fatboy Slim, Paul Van Dyk, Swedish House Mafia and many others at this year’s Future Music Festival, he was kind enough to stop by and have a nice, little chat with us at YFH. Check the whole item down below and don’t forget to catch him at FMF when he hits it!
Visit Porter Robinson on Facebook, Soundcloud, Twitter or Beatport!
You’ve had a very quick rise to stardom, playing some of the biggest festivals and releasing some of the best productions. What was ‘life’ before turning to music?
i guess my life before turning to music was prepubescence. i started when i was twelve. and before things got serious, my life was basically highschool. conveniently, i started touring right after i graduated.
How often are you spending time on the road these days?
i’m on a two month voluntary break right now because i haven’t written music in a long time. i can’t produce on the road, and i’ve been touring virtually nonstop for the last half-year.
Porter Robinson – Spitfire by Porter Robinson
How often are you in the studio? And on the topic of studios, are you sporting a complex setup or keeping it simple?
back when i was in highschool, i was writing music every day. i miss that. i’m in the studio a lot less now because the touring is unrelenting. and i use the term ‘studio” very liberally. my studio is my bedroom. i produced everything so far on a shitty computer with shitty $100 logitech consumer speakers. it’s a testament, i hope, to that you don’t have to spend any money to get good sound.
Do you enjoy the industry as much as when you first started or has it worn down over time?
i enjoy this community so much more than i did when i first started. before i broke through, i had this very cynical concept of the music industry – i thought that it wasn’t what you know, but who you know, and i thought that the music industry ignored merit and only cared about connections. but shit blew up for me just based on my songs performing well. i was 18, living in chapel hill, north carolina, and i had never been to a dj show in my life and i had never spoken in-person to another music producer or any music manager. my song ‘say my name’ came out on a record label that had never released a single song before and it still went to #1 on beatport’s electro chart. and the thing is, i don’t think that is unusual at all and it doesn’t make me exceptional in any way. through and through, i find that the guys who are doing the best are the ones who are putting out the highest quality tunes and putting on fun shows. until i was 18, my music was bad and that’s why i wasn’t succeeding.
Porter Robinson – I’m On Fire by Porter Robinson
How do you feel about EDM in the modern day?
it’s not too uncommon to see folks bitching about edm hitting the mainstream, but i’m all for it. the more people who get to share in this fucking magical world of amazing dance music, the better. there will always be an underground and there will always be fresh new shit. the music isn’t getting cheapened. do i protest too much?
Agreed! Has the industry changed the way you live? Do you stay up later?
hahah, i was staying up until 4:00 back when i was in highschool, so i don’t really stay up later. but my lifestyle is a lot more convenient, i think.
Funniest/ Weirdest experience since your introduction to our world?
the weirdest experience i’ve had in this edm world was uncovering a bunch of kids who were roleplaying as me, skrillex, datsik, zedd, skrillex’s tour manager, red, foo, etc. these two girls made a bunch of facebook accounts and named them “troy beetles”, “sonny moore”, “porter robinson”, etc, and had started one of those group private message sessions on facebook. i was able to discover this fucked up message session because they accidentally invited my real personal account while they were trying to invite the fake account. these two girls had datsik’s “character” talking about how he wanted to beat the shit out of my character, and they had my character talking about my (now ex-) girlfriend. it was the creepiest shit i’d ever seen.
Porter Robinson – Say My Name – Original Mix by Porter Robinson
Is an album something your looking at in the future?
spitfire is too short to be considered an album, i guess, but that was my foray into the world of multi-song releases. i’m focusing on singles for now.
Thank you so much for your time, it is certainly appreciated.
hey, no sweat. good chatting.
Tim Berg – Seek Bromance (Porter Robinson Remix) by Porter Robinson
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