A blank slate.” He started writing but nothing stuck.
But starting over is like staring into the void. I thought I should be able to write the next thing easily. “After the first album, I felt respected - like I had proved myself. “I was so incredibly hard on myself and had such impossible expectations,” he explains. The songwriter fell into a state of creative paralysis that soon mutated into depression and despair. The project was another hit: another single, ‘Ghost Voices,’ earned the producer his first ever Grammy nomination.īehind the scenes, though, Robinson was floundering. Then, in October 2017, a new chapter of Robinson’s career launched, with a new moniker and new scope: ‘Eon Break,’ his first single under the alias Virtual Self, signaled a growing interest in interdisciplinary art and Y2K trance. A Shelter Live Tour spanning 43 dates and five continents followed. On the surface, everything appeared fine: in 2016, he released the acclaimed single ‘Shelter’ with Madeon, backed by an anime music video created in collaboration with A-1 Pictures and Crunchyroll that’s since amassed 50m views. It was a critical and commercial smash, earning the star 1.3bn global streams, a spot on Billboard’s best dance albums of the decade list and eventually, the chance to create his own festival: Oakland, California’s Second Sky, a sell-out two-day event that launched in 2019.Īll this success should have left Robinson feeling confident about creating a follow-up album. This album transcended his boisterous beginnings, expanding his sound to incorporate giant, emotive hooks, video game textures and shimmery, cinematic synths. Worlds established him as one of the most restlessly creative new names in electronic pop: a visionary crafter of “gorgeous textures, contemplative storytelling and remarkably sharp melodies,” as the New York Times put it. Four years later, in 2014, came his debut album. In 2010, aged 18, he’d exploded onto the dance scene with frenetic, fist-pumping productions meant for electro-house basement raves. That’s what Robinson had every reason to believe. It’s a remarkable sound - one that took a remarkable journey to get here. “I want this music to be helpful to those people,” says the 28-year-old, who evolves his musical style on Nurture, rewiring his epic electro-pop fantasias of old into something intimate, raw and for the first time, driven by the producer’s own vocals.
“It really was an extensive period of just total emotional struggle,” says the North Carolina-based artist, who recounts “literally crying in the studio and in therapy sessions, thinking my life was over.” Nurture is made up of songs he found on the other side: catchy, adventurous, uplifting diaries of his own path back to happiness, each one imploring listeners suffering their own periods of hardship to hold on, to battle through. Nursing it to life meant overcoming existential panic, creative drought, depression and family illness. A joyous, brave explosion of electronic ideas, introspection and melody, Robinson’s Nurture took six long years of care amid crisis to flower into existence. No wonder acclaimed producer/songwriter Porter Robinson turned to this word for the title of his second album. Nurture is the act of tending something frail into blossom of patiently caring for something so it may grow.
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