Nurture - Porter Robinson: Review

Porter Robinson

is a North Carolina based electronic music producer who first emerged as a dubstep artist before transitioning into more abstract fields of electronic music leading up to his debut album in 2014. He hasn't been completely radio silent in the 7 years since releasing some remix projects and a couple EPs. Since his debut album received acclaim the long wait has caused this follow up to be a highly anticipated one. 

Review By Lav:

Man, I love electronic music. I missed Porter Robinson when he first emerged and only really heard his debut record after it came out. I have had time to learn a little bit more about him and given that he's from my home state of North Carolina and started dabbling in veins of experimental electronica I was pulling for him to succeed and excited to see what he would do next. I only heard one or maybe two of the singles for this record before going into it so I didn't know what to expect and I really was excited for it. Unfortunately this collection of absurdly overblown electro pop songs is one of the most tedious things I've heard this year. It is the opposite of experimental, borrowing heavily from contemporary music trends and a few artists in particular, while repeatedly crushing you with garish maximalist synth explosions for nearly an hour. It wasn't the worst album I've ever heard or anything but highlights were few and far between. 

While I don't have much more to say about most of this record I do wanna go over a few creative high points that it does include in its tracklist. Musician is the best of the electro pop cuts with a vocal performance that actually has some dynamic range and a multi-faceted hook. It's catchy and fun which is about as much as I can ask for from a track like this. The very next track do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do is a weird diatribe with a busy up-tempo instrumental backing some vocals that sound like they're making use of A.G. Cook style effects. The second half of the song is actually a much more interesting whirlwind of bright off-kilter sounds and as a transitional moment I appreciate what it brings. dullscythe is the best track of the bunch and sounds like if you took one of the other electro pop songs here and chopped up all its elements and arrange them to make it much more interesting. The track is jittery and unpredictable but comes out on the other end with a pretty beautiful sound. 

Some of the other songs here that would normally be highlights fail to live up to any standards of originality. Wind Tempos kicks off with keys from LCD Soundsystem's All My Friends and builds the entire track around them. Thankfully it eventually transitions into a pseudo ambient passage that sounds very naturalistic with sound interpolations only occasionally interrupted by something synthetic. While Mother isn't literally a 1975 song, I think if you played it to a group of people blind they would probably assume it was, that's how much it borrows. It's unfortunate because I actually like the song and think it's one of the best here but its hard to listen to it knowing how much of a rip off it is. Finally there's Blossom a short acoustic cut on the back end. It is a nice change of pace at that point on the album and a breath of fresh air from the incessant maximalism. 

That is pretty much it as far as highlights go. The rest of these songs are extremely overblown and often underwritten contemporary electro pop songs that I can hardly tolerate as a collective. There are some decent moments like the jagged distortion on Get Your Wish or the slow developing hook on Sweet Time. But the rest of these go from bad to worse with Look Up At The Sky, Mirror, and Unfold being the worst offenders. 

That is basically all I have to, or need to say about Nurture. I really was excited for this record and I'm open to albums approaching their sound in a different way than I anticipated, but this is a total mess. What is equally disappointing is that I can see a lot of potential in some of the records best moments, yet at its worst it presents some kind of Chainsmokers like blend of pop and the lightest EDM possible cranked up to maximum volume to feign interest. This isn't to say I'll never give Porter Robinson another chance, but I have to lay to rest once and for all the fact that this album isn't for me. 4/10

Album Cover Review by Tyler Judson:

This cover is funny, to the point and doesn't really have much to review. The color and composition is simple and satisfying to look at. There could be text to fill the empty space and give it some branding or personality but it gets the job done without anything crazy happening. 6.5/10

For more electronica check out my review of Iglooghost's Lei Line Eon here