Four years later, in 2014, came his debut album. In 2010, aged 18, he’d exploded onto the dance scene with frenetic, fist-pumping productions meant for electro-house basement raves. That’s what Robinson had every reason to believe. It’s a remarkable sound - one that took a remarkable journey to get here. “I want this music to be helpful to those people,” says the 28-year-old, who evolves his musical style on Nurture, rewiring his epic electro-pop fantasias of old into something intimate, raw and for the first time, driven by the producer’s own vocals. “It really was an extensive period of just total emotional struggle,” says the North Carolina-based artist, who recounts “literally crying in the studio and in therapy sessions, thinking my life was over.” Nurture is made up of songs he found on the other side: catchy, adventurous, uplifting diaries of his own path back to happiness, each one imploring listeners suffering their own periods of hardship to hold on, to battle through. Nursing it to life meant overcoming existential panic, creative drought, depression and family illness. A joyous, brave explosion of electronic ideas, introspection and melody, Robinson’s Nurture took six long years of care amid crisis to flower into existence. No wonder acclaimed producer/songwriter Porter Robinson turned to this word for the title of his second album. Nurture is the act of tending something frail into blossom of patiently caring for something so it may grow.

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