Details: 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), 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.