But watching Robinson onstage in Brooklyn, the problem of that awkward positioning was both underscored-there was some amount fist-pumping during the show’s more uptempo moments-and finally reconciled. Such out-of-placeness was an accident of unfortunate branding, most likely (though for all Robinson’s protestation, his soaring sonics do share mainstream EDM’s penchant for unrepentant over-the-topness). He wrote songs for sad machines, but somehow the music still resonated on a level that allowed him to play big festivals slots, nestling him uncomfortably onstage in front of tens of thousands of people who-young and dumb and (occasionally) full of drugs-maybe didn’t pick up on the nuances that separated his swooning emotion from Borgore’s bass-dropping hedonism. Growing up on the digital fantasies offered in Japanese RPGs and anime, the Worlds that the title of his breakthrough record referred to were inner spaces, insular journeys through the daydreams of a young loner-romantic. Years ago, while still enjoying the benefits of a regular gig at a Vegas megaclub, he denounced the hypercommercial forms of the genre his hi-def maximalism has often been lumped in with. In a way, though, Robinson’s music has always existed as a rebuke of that world, even as he inhabits its outskirts.
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