Porter Robinson is sipping a Diet Sunkist backstage at the Rialto Theater in Tucson, Arizona. He's about ten days into his ambitious 40-city "Worlds" tour, named for his debut LP, and he's starting to feel at home on stage."The first night, when I stepped up to sing my leg was shaking so hard," he admits. "My singing is getting better but I'm not Sam Smith. I've never said that. But I was singing in the DJ booth for years, why not let people hear it?"Nerves aside, singing is one of the lesser risks Robinson is taking on this current tour. After five years of DJing, Robinson is playing a totally live show of only his music, marking a clear break from the momentum of a career that brought him to a major label bidding war last fall. While he considered playing it safe with dates exclusively in large markets on the coasts, Robinson has opted instead for a barnstorming tour of North America with stops in less-likely smaller cities like Tucson, Guelph and Boise."The first bus tour that I went on was the OWSLA tour," he explains. "It was me, Zedd and Skrillex and we went to all these markets. In my head that's just how bus tours are done; you go to every city. I think there's something nice about being ubiquitous."Unlike his industry peers who came to dance music through the crucibles of club or rave scenes in Los Angeles, New York or Toronto, Robinson rarely left the house in his hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. ("I think the only show I've ever seen in Chapel Hill was Ratatat when I was 14," he confesses.) For an artist to admit no connection to club life is indicative of not only a generational shift as dance music fans are increasingly under 21 and too young to club, as well as a geographic one made possible only by the web."In really small towns where you get yelled at for wearing tight pants or whatever, I still see the few internet kids that have just lived their entire lives on the internet and clearly have never gone outside like I did in Chapel Hill," Robinson says. "I don't feel like I grew up in Chapel Hill. I feel like I grew up on the internet.""There are kids like that all across America," he continues. "You have these awesome emerging artists in the middle of Louisiana. They don't have accents; they were just raised by the internet. No matter what city I go to, no matter how small, that constituency is still there and they are really excited to see me."For those who live on Tumblr and those who don't, the Worlds show is a smorgasbord of light and sound. Robinson stands at a clear acrylic table that is decidedly not a DJ booth, but a setup including a drum pad, laptop, Roland Gaia synth, Roland SH-01 synth, and an Akai controller. Behind Robinson is a three-panel LED screen with projections of visuals he custom-designed and played live to match the performance. To make the sounds more live, Robinson "unbaked the cake" of his album, deconstructing each track so each instrument lives on its own channel, allowing the producer to control each element heard during performance. It also creates opportunities of humanity amid the machinery. During "Sad Machine," early in the set, Robinson live-records the synth loop that serves as the track's backbone. While the recorded version is precise and brightly robotic, in concert it takes on the looseness of reality under the producers own hand.As he does on Worlds, Robinson plays with his own influences in the show, winking and nodding through sonic homages to those in his audience who get it and aurally titillating those who may not. With each record from the album in pieces, he's able to stretch them all in performance, having the most fun with his pre-Worlds singles like "Easy," which he teases during recent single "Sad Machine," later dropping a few bars of "Sea of Voices" inside "Easy," and playing the emotive "Fellow Feeling" inside his debut release, "Say My Name." For anyone else, these little musical tricks along with the anime-influenced visuals that map the artist's own obsessions could come across as self-indulgent, but with Robinson it's a way to connect to his audience."I've had kids in Spokane come up to me and be like 'yo, I love your Vaporwave visuals,' just referencing this very niche net stuff," he says, referring to the post-Seapunk graphics style. "You don't need to know what that is. It's one of those micro-Tumblr movements that has become a meme because of how self-referential it is."For as understood as Robinson feels in moments like these, he's admitted to some frustration at the style choices he's seen in his crowds which he fears might reflect an inaccurate perception of his new work. Many of the college-aged students at shows in both Tucson and Tempe this week were dressed in the typical-EDM attire: Girls in short shorts and neon and guys in loose tank tops they're happy to whip off mid-show. Kandi bracelets abounding."I dont think I did a good enough job of telling people what this was in advance," he concedes. "It's all my own music. It feels nothing like my old DJ sets where I was playing bass drops. The message that I got was that all these people who were coming with bracelets that say 'RAGE' on them missed the memo. I was so frustrated. I started talking to the fans who stay after the show and stay outside the bus and they just get it so hard. They're interested in the themes and the motifs of the record, they want to talk to me about them, they have really common interests with me. People fuckin like it so who cares what they're wearing?""It's just me being overly self-conscious and judgemental," he adds, lightheartedly. "I'm making an active effort to get over it. I'm happy that anyone gives a shit to come see me."Despite the abundance of what Robinson refers to as "beautiful and sensitive" moments, the "Worlds" show features plenty of EDM hallmarks: big bass, sing-along melodies and volume. Still, at Tuesday's show, Robinson paused between songs to offer some instruction to his audience: "Please for the love of god don't talk during the quiet parts," he said on the mic. "Let's enjoy pretty stuff together."The crowd roared in agreement.While fans still erupt most loudly during singles like "Lionhearted" and old faves like "Easy," they're just as rapt during the album's emotive cuts like "Fresh Static Snow" and "Hear the Bells." Even though Worlds debuted in the Top 20 of the Billboard 200 last month, the young producer feels the pressure to prove his mettle on the road. Even as he's still negotiating the awkward separation between his DJ career and this new live show, Robinson is less shy about his love of EDM than he's been before."DJing is wicked fun and I like doing it," he explains. "I just wanted to do a live show for this album. To take elements that I love of EDM is way more liberating than if I force myself to throw out every element of the old stuff, everything that sounds like dance. This show is exactly what I wanted to do."Porter Robinson's "Worlds" tour continues this weekend in California and runs through October.Photos by Ryan Loughlin.More on P-Rob:
THUMP's Fall Music Preview
Porter Robinson Schooled Us In DDR
Beat by Beat Review: Porter Robinson - Worlds
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THUMP's Fall Music Preview
Porter Robinson Schooled Us In DDR
Beat by Beat Review: Porter Robinson - Worlds
