Porter Robinson

“There's a really high emphasis on having good taste in my household and having nuanced opinions. We're always critically analyzing stuff.”

“If an artist I liked disowned songs that meant a lot to me, I would be pretty hurt by that.”

“And I'm interested in writing music that takes risks. My point is that maybe the term EDM is pinned on me and my buddies, but maybe it'll be less so if I experiment.”

“I really am in love with the idea of an artistic signature.”

“An underexplored reason why nostalgic art is worthwhile is that it influences the way the past is remembered.”

“Being like 14 and 15 years old, listening to trance music in my home, I just had this fantasy of going to these big clubs and going to these massives, and just hearing this gorgeous, delicate music.”

“Toplines usually suck. I'll send a song to a band or artist whose entire body of work I love and I'll ask them to do a vocal for one of my songs and I'll get it back and I'll hate it so much. It might have to do with my possessiveness over my music.”

“I spend a good deal of time doing, for anxiety what's known as exposure therapy where basically you're supposed to confront things that cause you anxiety and learn to tolerate. It's all about learning to tolerate discomfort rather that avoiding anything that might make you feel uncomfortable.”

“I'm never going to stop writing music as Porter Robinson and I see 'Virtual Self' as more of a tangent.”

“I think that my biggest influences are electronic acts. Daft Punk is probably my number 1, then Kanye West would be number 2 after that.”

“The DJ role, it's never been a big thing for me.”

“I wanted to do music that was a little more sentimental, emotional, and serene - completely different from the party music I was doing.”

“I'm not a huge movie buff and I don't watch that much television, but I've spent most of my life playing video games of one kind or another.”

“Virtual Self' combines a lot of unlike elements - trance, jungle, slowed-down breakbeats.”

“I do want people to have a sense of just the extreme level of meticulousness and care that goes into everything. I wouldn't expect anybody to catch all the details of what I'm doing. The level of obsession is so extreme.”

“I just want the truth about it, because if the reality is that electronic music festivals are significantly more dangerous than other festivals, then something should be done about it, and that warrants conversation.”

“For me, the early 2000s stood for this vast, magical, electronic cyber realm - a time when the internet was so infinite, mysterious, and under-explored.”

“The thing that makes me want to proceed and finish a song is when it really touches me and makes me feel something.”

“I love the idea of web design that maximises expressiveness over functionality.”

“I was still on track to go UNC at Chapel Hill, I had no plans to be a musician. It wasn't even a goal of mine. Then I had this song that blew up and went viral and suddenly I found myself playing shows and having this music career.”