Nurture

Porter Robinson

EDM is so not my wheelhouse. The genre today tends to be very formulaic; same sounds, predictable peak and valley song structures, and often feature vocalists with a real lack of personality. However, in an effort to step out of my comfort zone, I decided to check out this new Porter Robinson record, Nurture. I already know the man's got great taste because of that Hakushi Hasegawa co-sign. After listening and digesting this thing over the past week, I'm very glad I gave it a chance.

Porter Robinson's brand of EDM, electronic pop, or however you want to classify it, feels much more elevated than most of the other mainstream music I've heard in this genre. There's a real sense of musicianship in the compositions and it feels like there was a conscious choice to step away from the common EDM tropes and form a new distinct path. This path takes queues from soundtracks, anime, IDM, and a little bit of ambient music. The tone of the album is incredibly cheerful, optimistic, perhaps a little naive. To me its about having big dreams, dealing with anxiety and thoughts of those dreams being unfulfilled, and ultimately believing in yourself and embracing the support of those around you in order to carry on. Who can't relate to that?

There's a lot to admire about Porter Robinson's work but in the end, I still wasn't entirely onboard. While pleasant from start to finish, I didn't feel like I was blown away by most of the songs here. One such exception though is definitely Wind Tempos, which I already know is gonna be the most beautiful thing I hear this year. The first half of this track has a cycling piano loop while white noise, breathy vocals, strings, and more dance around your head. The second half, however, is very emotional. It's an intimate, very beautiful, piano composition that is later joined by a melancholic, glitched robotic voice being chopped to bits. In the background, I can hear mouse clicks and room noise that makes me think that these vocal manipulations are being performed in that very moment. It honestly stopped me in my tracks the first time I heard it, and after repeated listens, it is still quite arresting. I would also like to quickly shout-out the track do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do because it is a fantastical piece of IDM. It has the hyperactive percussion you'd come to expect from an Aphex Twin track. The instrumentation, while quite busy, is easy, breezy, and very light on the ears.