PORTER ROBINSON DEBUTS 'LOOK AT THE SKY' VIDEO + NURTURE OUT 23RD APRIL
Photo credit: Dan Regan
“‘Look at the Sky’ might be the best song Porter Robinson's ever written. It's a culmination of his beginnings as a creator of dancefloor behemoths and his recent, introspective pop songwriting — pure hope, distilled, unsentimental, and sincere.”
- THE FADER
Today, acclaimed vocalist, songwriter and producer Porter Robinson unveils the video for his latest single, 'Look At The Sky,' directed by Chris Muir and choreographed by Matty Peacock (Billie Eilish, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez). The track is from Nurture, Robinson’s first album in seven years, slated for release on April 23 via Mom+Pop.
“I wanted to represent the things we all contribute to this world, and how they last even after we’re gone,” Porter says about the video, which he creative-directed alongside Samuel Burgess-Johnson (The 1975, Tove Lo, The Japanese House). “When I make music in a room by myself, I’m not truly working alone—someone else invented the piano, the computer, the software, even the ideas of melody, chord, harmony and scale. We’re always collaborating with a limitless number of people we don’t know, most of whom aren’t around anymore. We’re all contributing something to the world with our every action, for better or for worse. When we’re gone, let’s hope that the things we leave behind will be useful and beautiful.”
‘Look At The Sky,’ which Entertainment Weekly praised as “victory pop at its finest” and Billboard as “an unadulterated shot of hope,” originally debuted during Robinson’s Secret Sky livestream event last May. The track follows the first three offerings from Nurture—'Mirror,’ which The FADER called a “musical panacea” in its Best Songs of 2020 list; ‘Get Your Wish,’ praised by The FADER as “a skittish glimmer of a track that climbs its way up to total euphoria” and ‘Something Comforting,’ which finds Robinson in a moment of “melancholic introspection” swaying “between heavily layered production and subdued instrumentation” according to UPROXX.
Nurture will be available in a number of physical formats. The Deluxe Vinyl Box Set includes opaque white vinyl and deluxe gatefold jacket with box set-exclusive alternate album art, six 7” singles with box set-exclusive alternate album art and a Nurture hardcover artbook plus complete lyric booklet. The Standard Vinyl includes the opaque white vinyl discs and a matte finish gatefold jacket as well as the Nurture lyric booklet, while the Standard Retail Vinyl features clear vinyl discs with matte finish gatefold jacket as well as the Nurture lyric booklet. All physical orders come with a digital download of the album.
Nurture spans a highly challenging period in Porter’s life. Following his 2014 debut Worlds, which found Porter headlining festivals worldwide and being heralded as a wunderkind of a burgeoning new style of electronic music, Porter began to experience severe anxiety under the pressure of his success to a degree that was creatively crippling, smothered by his own self-criticism and high expectations. A vicious cycle began to take hold—the more Porter struggled to write, the more his sense of self unraveled, leaving him in a state of despair, which was exacerbated by his brother’s diagnosis with a rare and aggressive cancer.
Through much personal work, Porter began to claw himself out of his creative slump little by little. He began to experiment with a completely new sound inspired by early-aughts rave music, which turned into critically acclaimed side project Virtual Self. After some time, he finally returned to the piano and his own voice as the basis for the next evolution in his sound. Nurture is the resulting document of this period, a testament to hope and persistence in the face of the negative voices in one’s own head. It is a hopeful, intimate album that champions the power of vulnerability while paying homage to the struggles that pushed him to grow. This iteration of Porter’s sound stands starkly in contrast to his prior productions as it blends live instruments, digital synths, artificially pitched vocals, chopped samples and cozy ambience.
In May of 2020, Robinson put on the Secret Sky streaming festival, marking his only performance of the year. The 14-hour livestream event, which Robinson created as a way to give his favorite musicians a platform to perform, featured sets by G Jones, Jai Wolf, Kizuna AI, Madeon, San Holo, A. G. Cook, Anamanaguchi and others. The livestream was broadcasted via a digital auditorium built with state-of-the-art technology and attracted more than 4 million viewers, with the Youtube chat peaking at 8,813 chats per second during Robinson’s performance of the previously unheard ‘Look at the Sky.’
