Porter Robinson 【=◈︿◈=】
**fair warning, i yap a lot** i really haven't dove as deep into porter's discography as i probably should have but tonight i was listening to his album, Worlds and was surprised (and a little ashamed) that i hadn't given it a fair chance over the years. "Divinity" is such an amazing opener for the album and sets up the whole concept of these digital worlds and beings really nicely (not that it has to but it was cool it did imo). The featured vocalists on this album are so freaking good too. Breanna Duren on "Years of War" specifically stood out bc she sounds just like Lauren Mayberry (lead vocalist of Chvrches! and lowkey one of my first celebrity crushes lol) and I absolutely loved that. It wasn't the first time I had heard Porter though. I remember getting chills the first time i heard "Goodbye to a World" in high school probably like ~10 years ago. My friend and his sister were super into Porter and kept trying to convince me how cool the album was and how Porter used the vocaloid program and made it all on his laptop with Ableton and all this niche lore only my friend could have memorized lol I didn't really give it the time of day but he wore me down so much and i finally caved and listened to "Sad Machine" and "Goodbye to a World". The story and how i could almost visualize the machine...no, the girl dying gave me insane chills. Ever since then, I kept peeking in to what Porter had going on but it took me all these years to sit down and really listen to this album like I did tonight. 10/10. Has anyone else heard Porter's music? Maybe Madeon or Ninajirachi? Fred Again even!
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I've only listened to Worlds in completion but I really enjoy the songs there, even though it's not a genre I usually listen to. I remember Sad Machine being the first song I ever digital arranged/made a cover of all the way back when it was released so it is in a sense something I 'owe' any musical production ability I have to, and an arrangement I made of Shelter is still one of my favourite personal works even after all this time (I never got to uploading them anywhere in public but I plan to someday when I can make a video to accompany it). Of his newer songs I've only listened to Cheerleader. Very different sound from his old works while still retaining a Porter-ish flare, and I really like how crunchy the lead synth in it sounds. His music aside, I remember as well when Po-uta, his Vocaloid voicebank, was released. It's not based on his 'normal' voice though and was based on the pitched-up version from his Nurture album (an album I remember watching a live show of when it was newly released, but haven't really re-listened to so I can't recall any of its songs anymore... whoops)! Not a very popular voicebank but there are some cool songs using it, and I still listen to Porter's own demo song with it 'Humansongs' regularly. I really like the sci-fi 'AI living in the post-apocalyptic future' theme he has in some of his songs. Which of his songs is your favourite so far?
I hope you'll see this reply as i'm not sure an @ function works at the moment and i think this is only replying to my thread wow that sounds really cool! I have always wanted to experiment with making music(especially lately) but I haven't done so yet: :/ Do you still dabble in music production? What does that entail? I think i also watched the same concert! Covid lockdown vibez if im not mistaken haha it feels like so long ago now. If i had to choose a favorite song, i'd probably say it was the collaboration he did for League of Legends a few years back. "Everything goes on". Despite being corporate shill music, I felt he leveraged the reach and resources of the company to build this deeply personal and heartfelt song to his wife who suffers from agoraphobia. The song is really touching and the arrangement makes you feel privy to a larger, vibrant sonic world of adventure. Despite the heavy stakes, I think he manages to put a positive message front and center and the song is really an example of what I feel love should feel and sound like.
@ahhro Good luck with your own attempts to produce music! I highly recommend looking into LMMS if you haven't decided on a DAW yet, it's completely free and relatively straightforward while also being quite powerful for what it is. I'm not good with the 'technical' aspects of music production so I appreciate how in LMMS it can be as simple as dragging-and-dropping preset instruments on the piano roll and drawing the notes to start. I don't make a lot of music because while I can arrange/make covers of songs with some degree of competence, I don't have the 'sense' to compose my own original melodies effectively. I do still sometimes make songs here and there as part of a multimedia project I'm doing, and I've been thinking of committing to it more because one of my story's characters is canonically an amateur digital musician. And re: the LoL song, I can't blame you, I think regardless of the issues of 'corporate' products LoL has had a great track record of collaborating with amazing musicians (and artists/animators for their music videos)! 'Everything Goes On' really carries that 'melancholic but hopeful' vibe that I find unique about Porter's music.
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