Porter Robinson Speaks on SOPHIE’s Passing, New Music and “Nurture” Live Show in Recent Interview
Fans have been eager to hear more news about Porter Robinson‘s forthcoming album, Nurture. The music video for the album’s latest single, “Look at the Sky,” just dropped, and Robinson took to RADIO.com‘s New Arrivals with Bryce Segall to chat about it, his early days with Skrillex, all things Nurture, and more.
Speaking on “Bring It Back,” Robinson’s first demo he ever sang on with Skrillex, he told Segall: “That probably put my career in writing songs back a good three years, but that tour with Skrillex put my career 10 years forward in other ways, so, you know, we call it even.”
Segall went on to ask about the divide between Robinson’s alias, Virtual Self, and his current music. Robinson claims that he “overdosed” on the trance and club-oriented sounds of the alias and wanted to move on from it with Nurture. “I am grateful for the fact that I seem to get tired of things easily, because I think it always pushes me toward something new,” he said.
There was some fan backlash when Robinson mixed Virtual Self music with Porter Robinson music in a recent set. “I did have a little bit of a rule before about never mixing Virtual Self and Porter, and when I was approaching that set, as I was trying to mix up as much Porter music as possible, I had just done my DJ set for Secret Sky…and I had to put together this set, and was like, ‘what feels novel, what’s stimulating?'” he said.
“The thing that really motivated me to get out of bed at that point was breaking some rules. So, what if I just did put some Virtual Self music into a Porter set. And, you know what, the sky did not fall…”
When Segall asked Robinson for some hints at what the Nurture live show would look like, Robinson said: “I want to have some moments where I’m up front, and I’m as exposed as possible, I can really look people in their eyes, and really sing these songs out as best I can. That’s the feeling I find myself longing for when I think about that show. I want to sing this music, and I want to hear people singing it back.”
On the tragic passing of prolific producer SOPHIE, Robinson told Segall: “I’ve gone back to SOPHIE’s music in these last few days and it still really doesn’t feel real. I think that SOPHIE had this presence when she was alive that felt kind of immortal, and the music is so aesthetically consistent and like the world is so robust.”
“Some of the themes of artificiality that SOPHIE’s music played on kind of makes it feel like it can’t be true,” he continued. “That music feels physical, it just feels so immortal and it’s really hard for me to process it. And it really, really, really, really breaks my heart…”
Robinson rounded out the interview by speaking on new music beyond the release of Nurture: “I definitely don’t want to take seven years for the next Porter project, that’s for sure. I already have some ideas, and I’m having a lot of fun exploring them.”
To hear the full interview, visit RADIO.com.
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