Porter Robinson Has Always Been a Child of the Internet

Porter Robinson has been one of the most influential figures in electronic dance music for more than a decade. Across multiple albums, he has combined electronica, pop rock, ambient music, and internet culture. His music was a sharp contrast to the festival-ready structures that saturated much of the scene at the time. Ever since his debut album Worlds arrived in 2014, the EDM community couldn’t get enough of his take on indietronica, his meticulous worldbuilding, and the mythos surrounding his use of autotune and chiptune-influenced melodic writing. 

After releasing “Shelter” with Madeon and spending years touring, Robinson fell into a period of depression and burnout. At the time, Robinson struggled to write new music. He found himself questioning whether he could continue making electronic dance music at all. The turning point came with Virtual Self in 2017, an initially anonymous side project steeped in 2000s trance music, internet forums, and dystopian anime such as Serial Experiments Lain. The project helped reignite his creative drive.

By 2021, Robinson released Nurture, an album centered on reconnecting with the physical world and appreciating life outside the screen. The record was embraced by critics and fans alike and introduced his music to a new audience.

Robinson has visited Manila twice before: back in 2015 during the Worlds era and again in 2024 for the SMILE! 😀 tour. During that latter visit, he told Rolling Stone Philippines that it felt like the “real” Manila show after nearly a decade away. Inside a hotel room overlooking Manila Bay and ahead of his headlining set at &Friends Festival, he’s visibly excited to return for this third Manila show.

“I was terminally online before it even became a term,” Robinson tells Rolling Stone Philippines. “My first album was really inspired by my experiences in online worlds and MMORPGs and stuff like that, so yeah, it totally defined me. I don’t think my music was defined by where I’m from in North Carolina at all. It has way more to do with the experiences I had online.”

Robinson makes it clear that he was an internet kid from the start. As he recalls discovering music during his formative years, he traces a loose lineage of 2010s “hyperpop” music through different eras online. For him, one phase was defined by PC Music and artists like SOPHIE and A.G. Cook. Another arrived through 100 gecs. More recently, artists such as underscores, Jane Remover, and Ninajirachi have continued using the internet itself as an artistic language.

“There will be people who write from the perspective of those fragmented experiences,” he says. “[Platforms like] Discord is fragmented and a lot of [electronic music] emerged from Discord culture and that’s just as much internet music as stuff that was inspired by web forums or inspired by MMOs. No matter where they are, artists will write from their fragmented experiences on the internet or not.”

Internet Culture as Artistic Language

Robinson has never been shy about what inspires him. Whether he’s playing a classic EDM anthem or something far more left-field, he openly acknowledges that internet culture still influences the way he creates art as a whole.

He points to his two most recent albums, Nurture and SMILE! 😀, as examples. While Nurture emerged from an interest in Japanese ambient music, travel, and everyday observations, SMILE! 😀 focused more directly on fandoms and online culture. Looking back, he says both records arrived from engaging with communities, whether in physical spaces or online.

“I love people, especially groups of people, who can see the world in a different way than most people,” he says. “I think that’s the dopest thing in the world. I don’t feel any desire to stay tapped in on everything, but I find so much love and value in subculture and the things that people love. As long as that’s where culture is living.”

on New Music: What Resonates, What Doesn’t

Porter Robinson has been listening to plenty of new music lately, and not necessarily within electronic dance music. He says he doesn’t actively try to embed himself in communities. Instead, when something genuinely resonates with him, it gets his full attention.

“I think that artists like Frost Children resonate with me so hard and I don’t have to make an effort to be like, ‘Oh this is the next wave’ or ‘Let me tap in,’” he says. “For me, it’s more just like, ‘I love what y’all are doing. I want to listen to this music. I want to DJ it.’ It makes me feel good. I always tell myself if the world kind of moves on to something that I don’t connect to, I don’t want to force it. I want to make what resonates with me.”

Robinson points out that many younger electronic artists are drawing from childhood experiences and translating them into adulthood through music. It’s a process he knows well. Much of Virtual Self was driven by a desire to revisit the sounds and aesthetics that defined his artistry growing up.

“What artists nowadays are doing right now is this move that’s very familiar to me, which is taking something from your childhood and putting it into your adult experience,” he says. “I think what they’re doing is so good. I’m just so happy to be a part of that legacy at all and I just feel like the future is in good hands.”