I didn’t like my own music, or the music my contemporaries were playing at that point.
Who I was trying to be and who I actually was became too much to bear. I adopted this rockstar persona – I was trying to be something I wasn’t. “At that time I was trying too hard to be cool and to be what I thought a superstar DJ should be. “By 2014, EDM had morphed into this over-the-top cartoon version of itself,” he says. Robinson came to realise that this wasn’t making him happy. Which would be an exhilarating, addictive ego-boost for anyone – let alone a teenager who went from being “not the coolest high schooler to suddenly having this runaway success with music”. Robinson was riding the crest of the EDM wave. Requests started pouring in and the young producer went on a whirlwind tour of the US for the next two to three years, releasing a steady stream of frenetic, fist-pumping productions. Not knowing what he was about to unleash, he put out a record (‘Say My Name’) and to his complete surprise it went straight to Number One on the Beatport electro house chart. Admitting he didn’t know how to DJ back then, Porter Robinson explains that he’d been making music just for fun since the age of 13, and that he wasn’t trying to make a career out of it at that point. It was around the time of Skrillex’s first single that an 18-year-old who – in his own words – was a shy, introverted computer nerd (qualities that every typical DJ possesses) released an electro house track he made while messing around in his bedroom in North Carolina. Like it or not, they knew they were onto something huge. Recognising an opportunity, the likes of David Guetta, Calvin Harris and Tiësto then start to adapt their musical styles to match the relentless and aggressive, yet crowd-pleasing big room sound.
Soon after, Steve Aoki, Afrojack, Martin Garrix and Avicii will follow in his wake, releasing equally rebellious, dubstep-inspired bangers. Skrillex’s ‘Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites’ is driving teenagers wild and driving their parents mad. EDM is on the brink of exploding and America will soon rediscover its love for dance music.
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