PORTER ROBINSON LIVE AT AVANT GARDNER 11/1/18
POR (clap) TER (clap) ROB (clap) IN (clap) SON (clap) IS (clap) BACK (clap)!! Woweee where do I even begin? American DJ and producer, Porter Robinson, played a DJ set last night at Avant Gardener and I am sooooooooooo happy he is back!
Porter released Worlds (one of my favorite albums) in 2014 and went on the Worlds tour in 2015. I was lucky enough to see his live performance twice (Ultra and a month later at Coachella). Seeing him perform this tour in the Sahara tent was honestly one of the most memorable times I have had in the tent (and I’ve been to Coachella 7 times). He craft fully takes you on a journey through Worlds and I cannot even explain how amazing his live sets are. If you have the chance to see a live set, I HIGHLY recommend. Anyways, after the Worlds tour he kind of disappeared, and then out of nowhere he began releasing music as Virtual Self. He released a self-titled EP, the most popular song being Ghost Voices (BANGER – everyone dropped it at festivals). VS music is a little bit on the darker side and there are rumors of him being depressed during this time. He only toured as VS for the last year, and I was lucky enough to see him during Winter Music Conference at The Ground. It was very dark and futuristic feeling. Many people showed up wearing Porter merch hoping he would drop some Porter during any point of his set. Welp, he didn’t, and this left Porter fans wondering if they will ever see him again.
Finally, he started randomly playing DJ sets as Porter this year and I was lucky enough to witness it last night. And let me tell you, he’s back to the super cute anime visuals and rainbow prisms (although at one point it got a little dark and he had Doom95 visuals – which I wasn’t mad about). He played Sad Machine, Flicker, and most of the Worlds album in typical Porter fashion. This made me suuuuuuper happy and left hope that another album will hopefully follow. He randomly dropped Run by Tourist and I (Brian, too) almost wept. If ya’ll haven’t listened to Tourist, go check him out because he is a m a z i n g. When his set was complete he walked off stage and the crowd per usual chanted “One more song!”. Honestly, I didn’t think he would do an encore but to my surprise, he came back out and started playing Shelter – his collab with Madeon. Finally, he finished with the most classic Porter song – Language. This song is from pre-worlds and every true raver from the early 2010s will tell you this song is an absolute B A N G E R. This set gave me so much hope and I truly think PR is back and we will get that album we’ve been waiting for (plz pray).
https://giphy.com/gifs/porter-robinson-avant-gardner-wHrj8kBlvK9sVIDyOc
// Check him out if you can. He’s playing three more DJ sets this year as PR:
December 29th: San Bernardino
December 30th: Chandler, AZ
December 31st: San Diego, CA
and if you’re going to iii Points in Miami you can check him out as Virtual Self.
Check out some of the tunes he dropped on Halloween at Avant Gardner:
Photos by Brian Burnham / @deathturtle
