PORTER ROBINSON

Firing Up

Porter Robinson had never seen a DJ perform before he hits the decks for his first gig at a club in Santa Cruz – “it was nothing to write home about… but it was not a fucking disaster,” he says. ANNABEL MACLEAN chats with the Chapel Hill young gun about a bad gig with Skrillex, joining his label OWSLA and what’s in store for 2012.

American electro-house DJ and producer Porter Robinson has just had two months off from touring and although he hasn’t been as productive as he would’ve liked to have been, he’s written two tracks and got to see his dog in his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. “It was great to be back writing music because DJing is a very, very different world from writing music – one of them is extremely hectic and high energy and the other is a very sort of deliberate, long winded process with like a lot of coffee and time,” he says down the phone from his bedroom.
For a young lad who only recently finished high school, he’s accomplished a lot – his debut EP Spitfire hit the #1 spot on the iTunes Dance Chart and took out the #1 spot on Beatport’s overall release chart, he’s performed alongside the likes of Deadmau5, Moby, A-Trak, Dada Life, Afrojack and even recently supported Tiesto on his College Invasion Tour last year. Now signed to Skrillex’s fresh label OWSLA (Spitfire was the first release on his label), Robinson is stoked. “Skrillex - his rise has just been absolutely astronomical, he’s become this monster artist (no pun intended) but basically about a year ago, my manager booked Skrillex to play at his club in Santa Cruz which is like a 100 capacity room when Skrillex was not really huge and he played my music in the car for Skrillex,” he says of how he landed on the label’s artist bill.
“Skrillex absolutely loved it and so he asked for my contact details and we started talking and sending music back and forth and that turned into a couple of shows together and then a tour together and then he started talking to me about his label and I figured there’d be no better avenue for my release to be the first release on Skrillex’s label. It’s incredible.”
Not as incredible as a spontaneous gig, however, that they decided to put on when they were in Tennessee (“actually, oh fuck, where was it?”) not long ago. “We were like ‘we should do like a free party today and we should all do it together, we should play together’ and we got all excited about it and started spitballing ideas and decided that we were only going to play cool techno,” he says. “We weren’t going to melt people’s faces; we just wanted have fun dance music and stuff like that.
“We posted the address and it was like a 100 and 50 fucking degrees, it was so hot and just none of our equipment would work because of the temperature and we’re not really skilled at playing that type of music – it’s not what we do – and I think the crowd was a little baffled and confused, like ‘why are they not playing the music that they make?’ . It was not successful. It was a failed operation. It kinda leaves a bad taste in the mouth.”
Robinson plays Future Music Festival before heading to Ultra Music Festival, Coachella and Tomorrowland and that’s all before July. He’s excited to have finally figured out a way to produce on the road, a big step in a right direction for the budding producer. “I had no idea how to do it before and I wasn’t technologically equipped because I play my live show on a Mac and I produce music on a Windows and I finally just purchased a new high end Mac and figure out how to get Windows running on it so I’ll be writing music on the road from now on.”
Perth punters will get to hear some of that new music when Robinson hits town shortly. “I think one novel thing about my set is that I tend to mix very quickly and have a high energy set… I tend to mix every 30 to 40 seconds and it’s done in a very tasteful, interesting way,” he says. “So I think I’ll have a nice sort of ADHD set ready for Future.”