“Two years ago,” remembers Porter Robinson, “I only had the inkling of the idea that I wanted to do something different. I needed to do something that was honest and real,” Porter explains. So he turned down countless DJ offers in 2013 to spend the entire year devoting himself to a process of introspection and reinvention. “I figured that one way to develop a unique identity as an artist would be to combine all my favorite things in music — it would result in something that is really personal, a collective expression of my taste and experience. Something nobody else has.”

And thus begat worlds (Astralwerks/Virgin EMI), a cinematic excursion that commingles Porter’s technological prowess with his love of evocative melody. His first studio album, it finds an unlikely common ground for Porter’s diverse inspirations: Kanye West’s Graduation, Daft Punk’s Discovery, The Postal Service, and an array of orchestral movie scores.

“Sea of Voices,” for instance, is just that: gauzy, feather-light vocals that float above an ethereal-shoegaze soundscape. That track trickles into the “Years of War,” which transfers those levitating vocals onto radiant synth pop propelled by a fuzzy beat. He prolongs that pop euphoria with the anthemic “Lionhearted,” which pushes-and-pulls between ambient sighs and power chords, further rewarding the listener with the glitched-out “Fellow Feeling,” an avant centerpiece that swells from violin-driven sentiment to industrial static, before settling into palpitating chords.

Not surprisingly, there’s never been anything conventional about Porter’s introduction to music. The artist’s first foray into music came through the arcade-stomping game Dance Dance Revolution. (These days, he’s graduated to StepMania, which, yes, he totally dominates.) “A huge amount of music that I listened to for a long time, like 200 people have probably ever heard these songs,” he says. “And a lot of it was bad, C-grade emulations of dance music being made in Europe. But something about the tempo was super-interesting to me.”

At age 12, the autodidact started futzing around with cuts and beats on his mom’s computer using pirated software. (He’s since paid for and repped everything he nicked, as an act of voluntary reparation.) He came into his own in 2010, when he scored a No.1 Beatport hit with his crunchy, twitchy single “Say My Name,” which lead to his first gig at a tiny club in Santa Cruz, Calif. “It was very much baptism by fire because I had never seen a DJ,” Porter says of the lack of any discernible scene in Chapel Hill. “I had to more or less do it based on what I had learned on the Internet.”

Needless to say, he was a quick study. His grassroots following exploded through the release of a successful EP and series of high profile DJ gigs. Then, in 2012, Porter scored an iTunes No.1 with the shimmering “Language.” Porter found himself touring five days a week, crashing at his parents’ house when he was in town. “It took me to a place where I wasn’t writing music. And I was DJing a lot of other people’s music,” he says. “I think that helped speed up how sick I got of dance music and all of its tropes.”

Making worlds was an intriguing artistic challenge for him. “A huge part of my work has always been this effortful, expedited self-discovery,” Porter says. For worlds, “I would pick three things and say, ‘This song is going to have these three traits.’ And then I would start writing, and halfway through the song it would become something that I’d never heard before,” he says, citing the first track he recorded for worlds, “Divinity Made.”

The voluminous, ethereal hymn was born of his seemingly impossible self-challenge to write a song that was beautiful (“I really like pretty music, almost to the point of sappiness,” he admits), loud, yet vintage-sounding. That, in turn, calibrated the overall aesthetic for worlds, for which he also recruited fresh, unknown vocalists.

Even though his creative pulse no long hinges on BPMs, early incarnations of his newer, more melodic compositions still perked the ears of countless labels. And that led him to Astralwerks/Virgin EMI. “They were really supportive of my weirdness,” he says, laughing. Or his ambitions, as it were: because Porter’s live show will likewise be a unique experience — one that doesn’t involve him DJing.

“I don’t want to be the flag bearer for any genre. I don’t want to change the game,” he says. “I really just want to have my own signature, my own sound. I know it sounds crazy, but I want to start my legacy.”

“It feels like I just came home from a giant trip, a vacation somewhere. I haven't communicated pretty much in any way since 'Shelter.' I just saved up my story for the past three years. And I'm gonna tell it now.” —Madeon
 
Hugo Leclercq, the musician known as Madeon, first appeared to many as something like a teenaged fireball. In 2011, his frantic yet perfectly sculptural “Pop Culture” famously sampled 39 hits, live, from Daft Punk to Solange, instantly propelling the then-17-year-old to the international stage. By the time of his debut album, Adventure, in 2015, Madeon was a globally beloved artist with production credits for Lady Gaga and Coldplay.
 
Yet his first full-length, released via Columbia and his own popcultur, still evokes a bright sense of wonder about the world. “I very purposefully stayed with my parents when I made Adventure because I wanted to capture my life as a teenager in France,” he says. “Listening back, it’s a good reminder that it always works out best when you’re sincere. I wasn’t pandering, I was just really trying to make what I loved.” A FADER review called it “expansive, impossibly beautiful... one of the most radiant pop albums in recent memory.” Soon after, he teamed with longtime friend Porter Robinson for “Shelter,” an immersive, ecstatic single he calls their “victory lap.”
 
Now, a few years later, Madeon is perhaps a more deeply seasoned artist than wide-eyed dreamer from Nantes -- but he’s just as ambitious as ever. “I knew if I wanted to make something different, I needed to change my life around,” he says, so he moved to Los Angeles to focus the project in a new way. “I wanted to wake up in the morning and feel like every second of my life was about Madeon. My walls are covered with concept art and logo designs and instruments and references and records that I love. It’s all I do from the minute I wake up to the minute I go to bed.”
 
“All My Friends” is the radiant introduction to this new era. Joyful and bright, it’s the sort of pop song that, by any other artist, would have required hard work from a team of writers and producers. Madeon, of course, wrote and produced the whole thing himself. Following the path he began on Adventure with songs like “Home,” he is the sole vocalist on the track. “It’s fun to do a song that’s so blatantly, sincerely pop,” he says. “I love to make that kind of music mostly on my own -- you’re not really supposed to be able to make it that way.”
 
Madeon began working on “All My Friends” when he booked a studio for three days in New York “just to see what would happen,” he says. “I remember I was walking alone, and the sun was a particular shade. It struck me all at once, vividly. It was like a flavor: sounds and sights and smells. I felt impossibly confident and enthusiastic, and the song became like a premonition of what I had to do.”
 
Often, Madeon can seem as much a musician as a world-building architect, and there’s no question his full vision for what comes next will soon shine through in high definition. But for the moment, just as when he began his career, we have a single song, a brilliant statement of new purpose.

Robotaki: There is a lot more behind the name and the mask than most people may perceive. Coming in to the spotlight with his top-tier remix work, and being recognized for his impeccable sounds, Preston Chin, the man behind the moniker has prepared himself to take on a much greater task. A task that entails enveloping the world with a powerful new take on funk and disco. A responsibility to brighten peoples days and to make people dance. A quest to bring a fresh musical experience to humans that has never been done before. 

After months in the studio crafting and harnessing forward thinking new sounds and ideas, Robotaki is now armed with an arsenal of exciting original material. Material that will change the world with its superior production. Records and experiences that will lead listeners to question, is he super human?