It's not often I feel inadequate or intimidated when speaking to a nineteen year-old, but in the case of DJ, remixer and producer Porter Robinson, it was hard to feel anything but.
Porter has already landed a #1 song on Beatport’s Electro-House chart and has played sell-out shows across the world, performing alongside such reptubale names as Deadmau5, Tiesto, Moby, Skrillex, Dada Life and more. He's remixed tracks for Lady Gaga, Aviici and Yolanda Be Cool, all the while just recently graduating high school in his hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. By comparison, I had only just discovered Twitter at age nineteen.
Ahead of his first ever show in Adelaide, Porter spoke with Glam Adelaide writer Gianni Borrelli.
GB: You're performing at Red Square on Friday night, is this your first time in Australia?
PR: It is, I've been here for five days now. It's pretty delightful, it's more similar to the United States than I expected, no offence *laughs*. But it’s very comfortable; I could definitely see myself living here because a lot of it is what I’m used to.
GB: When did you begin DJing and producing music?
PR: I started producing when I was about twelve years old. There was a lot of weird video-game electronic Japanese music that I was liking at the time so I wanted to emulate that. At the time I didn’t know about club music or house music or anything that really gets played out, but as was the case for a lot of electronic music producers, you kind of get shuffled into the club music scene and the dance music scene. I’ve been making music for the last seven years and only in the last couple of years have I been DJing. I’m a definitely a musician first and foremost.
GB: The roles are obviously both so different but you prefer producing?
PR: Definitely.
GB: Your work is quite eclectic, like you mentioned before you tried emulating Japanese video-game music, who else do you draw inspiration from?
PR: The number one guy for me in the beginning was Wolfgang Gartner. I loved his music so much that it inspired to make a glitchy, electro style. But I also wanted to make sure my work was distinct from his. Back then I was interested in incorporating elements of progressive house and dubstep. But lately I’ve felt that that’s a little gimmicky and I’ve moved away from that. But in the beginning I really wanted to have my own personal take on the glitchy electro house sound that I was infatuated with. I just love bass music. Noisia, drum and bass, artists who make really detailed and really hard bass music.
GB: I've listened to a few of your remixes and they're fantastic, especially The Edge of Glory by Lady Gaga, which I love. As someone who listens to a lot of music and remixes and doesn't know a whole lot about the process, how does it happen? Are you commissioned by the artist to remix certain songs or do you remix the tracks first and send it to the artist?
PR: It varies from case to case but by far, most of the time it will be the artist who commissions the remixer. They’ll offer a percentage of the royalties, that’s usually how it works. In this case, Lady Gaga’s camp at Atlantic Records reached out and asked for us to do the remix for her. I can’t help but wonder if she’s heard it… but it’s an honour to have done that remix for that group of people.
GB: You've toured with some massive names like Afrojack, deadmau5, Skrillex, David Guetta, what is the most memorable gig or performance you've done?
PR: Probably would have to be the gig at Huntsville, Alabama. You would never expect that, and it’s part of what made it so magical. This was on a tour with Skrillex, and there was another artist on tour with us named Zedd. He went on and came back and said he was really struggling and it was a really tough crowd and it was really hard to play. So I went out there and I had the lowest expectations ever and thought ‘Okay this is definitely going to be bad, this is going to be difficult’ and I just thought ‘F*** it, I’m just going to go absolutely crazy up here’. And I basically just started playing and entertainment myself, having a crazy-ass party up there in the booth, playing super hard, and the crowd just went nuts, it was one of the best crowd responses I ever had. It was the first time I ever crowd surfed on a gig. It was incredible, totally defied my expectations.
But actually… I’d have to say the best gig for me was one of the massive festivals I did in Vegas called EDC [Electric Daisy Carnival]. Playing that stage was crazy. Lots of energy and such a positive crowd. It was my first time on a main stage at a major festival. I had always done the second-biggest stage but never the main one, and it goes to show that there’s a variety of shows that work, it’s not always the huge festivals with the craziest crowds that will give you the best experience. Sometimes it’s something completely unexpected, like Huntsville, Alabama! *laughs*
GB: If you weren't DJing and making music, what other career path might you have gone down?
PR: It's so hard to say because I only started seriously investing in music last year when I was eighteen, and I was still at school. But I was good at economics and I also excelled in psychology, but who's to say? I definitely didn't see music becoming a full-time thing so I guess that throws all my predictions out.
Porter Robinson plays at nightclub Red Square on Friday, August 12.
www.rsq.com.au
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