Hear Porter Robinson, Post-EDM’s Greatest Hope, Duet with a Robot on “Sad Machine”

Premiere: Porter Robinson’s second Worlds LP track features him singing with a robot.

May 12, 2014



FADER PREMIERE

Sometime soon, post-EDM wunderkind Porter Robinson will release Worlds, his debut album. Though a colossal star in the dance-festival space (he's nearing 3 million Soundcloud followers), so far the 21-year-old North Carolina native has been summarily ignored in the indie press; Worlds should make him ubiquitous. The first track he shared from the album, "Sea of Voices," feels like Dead Cities-M83 till he one-ups that record with a poppy, heaven-sent outro featuring Owl City's Breanne Duren. "Sad Machine," the second single, pushes the very idea of a vocalist, featuring a duet between Robinson (making his vocal debut) and Vocaloid, a synth that recreates the human singing voice. Sounds like how it would feel like to discover the sun. The single will be available on iTunes tomorrow, May 13th. Hear the song and read what Robinson had to say below.

I’d used Vocaloid as the vocals for several of the songs on Worlds, and then the idea of a duet between a lonely robot girl and the human boy who encounters her occurred to me. I didn't have much time before I had to turn in the entire album, so I just sang the male parts. I wanted something that felt distantly sad, a little cute, surreal, hopeful, and maybe somehow evocative of fiction?

Stream: Porter Robinson, "Sad Machine"

Stream: Porter Robinson, "Sea of Voices"

Hear Porter Robinson, Post-EDM’s Greatest Hope, Duet with a Robot on “Sad Machine”