It's hard to regret making the choice that you think is right.
Porter Robinson
I want my music to be really big. I have no interest in DIY Brooklyn; I don't want to be a small indie band.
But to me, 'Worlds' is meant as kind of an appreciation of fiction and stories and escapism and fantasy.
The thing that makes me want to proceed and finish a song is when it really touches me and makes me feel something.
Virtual Self' was me trying to paint a picture of a very foggy, distorted memory that I had of electronic music on the internet.
Electronic music was this super cool thing to me my whole life.
My relationship with my brothers... it's almost weird. We've never fought, we finish each other's sentences, but not in a creepy way. We talk about the things that we love and share music with each other.
An underexplored reason why nostalgic art is worthwhile is that it influences the way the past is remembered.
Virtual Self' combines a lot of unlike elements - trance, jungle, slowed-down breakbeats.
When I'm writing good music and I'm caffeinated, I attribute all my success to the coffee, get really sentimental about the EDM scene and tweet a lot.
I had a lot of self-doubt when I started. And I still do. But I had a lot of the wrong kind of self-doubt when I first started making music and first started to tour. I think I was a little bit deferential.
My most successful song was 'Language' and I think partly because it's a nice, dancey record, but I'll see people cry in the audience to that song, and that's so much more interesting to me than making someone just jump up and down.
If an artist I liked disowned songs that meant a lot to me, I would be pretty hurt by that.
I think not having come from the DJ world was an asset to me at first because I didn't have some of the habits other DJs had, and I think in a way that set me apart.
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.
When I'm making sentimental trancey fluffiness, I like to have some equally saccharine aromas filling the room.
I'm mostly known for writing electro and aggressive bangery house music. But before I started making electro, and while I was making electro, this sort of gushy, make-the-ravers-cry sort of sentimentality is so important to me.
I came into having an artist's career in this very sheepish and directionless way. It's hard to explain, but I was 18 years old and I was ready to go to college; that was the next step for me. Then suddenly I had a song that blew up... and I had this artist's career and I was on tour with these big names and I didn't know what I was doing.
The one thing you can't control is what comes after what you release.
If I could turn it on like a faucet then I think it would be kind of unearned. I feel like you need to struggle a little bit to make anything good.
The DJ role, it's never been a big thing for me.
The warmest place I've ever been is my home here in Chapel Hill. It's an oasis of comfort and joy for me.
As much as early 2000s aesthetics are something I was pining for and very much love, I would occasionally struggle to find one singular image or one singular site that summed up all of my memories really well.
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.
EDM is very functional. It's meant to make people jump up and down and go crazy and it's real good at that. I just think in terms of expression, it's very very limiting.
I wanted to do music that was a little more sentimental, emotional, and serene - completely different from the party music I was doing.
Yeah, I've always wondered what it would be like to make music that's not nostalgic at all, and it's really, really hard for me to imagine.
So, the concept was a single-stage festival, and I open and close the festival to encourage people to stay for all of the other artists.
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.
I like to shower for a really long time; that's a distraction-free zone for me.
I wanted what I was doing to be really true to me and my tastes. That's what 'Worlds' was, me taking a break from what I was doing and doing something that was honest, authentic and real.
I still play the songs I declared noncanonical.
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.
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.
I played video games for years. I immersed myself in them. They're so beautiful. They have these gorgeous imaginary landscapes. And they were just very dear to me.
I wanted 'Second Sky' to be my way of recommending truly good music to my audience that I think is worthy of their time.
There's so many things that can go wrong, and if I'm merely playing and not hosting a festival, none of those things reflect on me.
I wanted to have a grander vision, something that I felt like I was really fighting for and I wanted to have a real idea and be authentic.
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 was trying to write new music, but there was nothing I was reacting against. It turned out 'Worlds' itself became something for me to to resist.
My original goal was to get into the Top 100. I listened to every song in the Top 100 every day. I knew them all - this is where the gods reside.
Star Wars Galaxies' didn't ever explain itself to you. It was horribly broken; it was glitchy in several significant ways. It was just this vast, expansive, beautiful universe with all these crazy idiosyncrasies.
I wanted there to be something to fill the space and to catch the listener's ear, but I didn't want there to be any 'Virtual Self' songs that had a clearly defined vocal with lyrics and top line. If you do hear any lyrics, it's just your brain filling in the gap, because those moments are just various syllables combined.
It was more than enough, but I'm completely satisfied that 'Virtual Self' got nominated for the Grammy. That is a complete victory for the project in my mind and anything else is just bonus.
I've got a hundred thousand things on my mind that are taking precedence over trying to make pop collaborations.
It might be interesting to people to say that I would do something with Taylor Swift, but the reality is, it's so not on my list of things to do.
I think Skrillex working with Justin Bieber - some immature people will have a huge problem with that; I'm just saying I don't care.
There are a lot of people who wonder why Japan is a pretty consistent influence in my music, and I think it's because the reason I started writing - my intro to electronic music was Japanese music.
The anonymity of the internet has been completely abandoned - everything's so tied to your identity and sense of self now. It's hard for me to see that changing, but that's why I wrote a love letter to something that once was.
I love the idea of web design that maximises expressiveness over functionality.
