Going into this show, I had no idea what to expect. Porter Robinson had established himself as a staple of the EDM scene after touring as an opener for EDM giants Tiesto and Skrillex and releasing his Spitfire EP in 2011. Porter was constantly touring and playing shows and festivals, doing what all EDM DJs did at the time: DJ sets. They would play a mixture of their own music and other hits in similar EDM subgenres night after night, and I was no stranger to shows like this. It was to be expected that going to an EDM show you would be seeing a DJ set, at least from my fairly close-minded perspective. But with the release of his first album, WORLDS, in the summer of 2014 Porter Robinson completely pivoted from EDM to a more synth pop style. No more 8 measure DJ intros, and each song tried to tell a story that was a love letter to Porter’s love for MMOs in the early to mid 2000s.

I did no research and had no idea what to expect from the show. I thought maybe he’d figure out a way to perform a DJ set that still incorporated his new songs into it, but was completely floored by what I experienced instead. It was a complete live show with specially commissioned visuals that played on a massive LED screen behind the giant, curved plexiglass table Porter had custom made for the show. Every song was heavily modified from it’s album version into a special live version of the song, and extra life was pumped into each track by Porter playing live on top of his own music with a selection of electronic keyboards and drum pads. I felt like an idiot for thinking I’d be seeing another DJ set and was completely blown away by the visual and audio spectacle of this show. In under 90 minutes Porter Robinson had successfully proven to me that he is my favorite artist by a landslide. The visuals and the references to the worlds created by MMOs (hence the name WORLDS) resonated completely with my upbringing surrounding the internet and gaming in the 2000s.

The inspiration I got from this show was the catalyst I needed to start exploring amateur audio. It inspired me to go home and download FL Studio and start messing around with whatever I could. I never got deep into music production, probably due to my undiagnosed ADHD, but thanks to that experience I learned quite a bit about how to use a DAW to edit and generate audio.