It was the raw-edged sounds of his debut EP, Spitfire, that won the masses over, but only with his most recent hit, "Sea of Voices", does it now seem like Porter Robinson has what it takes to ensure a long and successful career as an EDM producer and genuine star in the music world. He's still quite young (21), so he's still got a lot of time to grow and develop as an artist, but with "Sea of Voices" a bona fide hit, and this latest release, "Sad Machine" a juggernaut of a track in its own right, Robinson seems to pretty much have his stardom at hand. "Sad Machine" features a female Vocaloid and Robinson's own voice, and the duel entities bring back memories of tracks from the legendary Postal Service album where Ben Gibbard and Jenny Lewis made legendary that experimental fusion of indie and electronic sound composition. I would stop short of calling this track a spiritual descendant of that tradition (Robinson is clearly forging his own path here), but there's so much original and innovative work in this one song that the sweeping chords and melodies might age just as well as Give Up did in the early 2000s. Robinson's music is still predominantly electronic, but it's not your average offering, and it's going to push his career far forward as a result.
Porter Robinson