Porter Robinson is back with a smashingly groovy, melodic, and seemingly introspective album, “Worlds.”  This is his first album release since 2011’s “Spitfire,” and features a remarkably different sound.  In “Worlds,” Robinson seems to stray the line between radio-ready electro-pop songs such as “Hear the Bells” featuring Imaginary Cities, and trance-tent ready jams like “Lionhearted” featuring Urban Cone.

What thoroughly surprised us about this album compared to the last is how much Robinson’s style has changed, and how he is able to incorporate a lot of different sounds to make a quite remarkable album.  Compared to thrashing, dubstep heavy sounds in songs like last album’s “The State,” this new album seems to paint a completely different picture of the artist.  While the creativity is still highly evident, his adoption of slower, synth heavy beats seems to be an introspective reflection, a time of chilling out as opposed to going “100% in the Bitch.”

A drastically different sound for a new debut album is always a risk for artists, especially in the EDM world where newer DJs are experimenting with more innovative sounds.  Some critics, such as Pitchfork Media, place the album on the spectrum of “mainstream electronic music.”  We, however, applaud Robinson for straying away from his heavy and aggressive sound to create an album that’s happy, upbeat, and melodic.  The sound is anything from mainstream, and is extremely technical in its transitions and choice of lyrics, and the wide variety of emotions that it is able to portray is truly impressive.

Robinson’s “Worlds: North America Tour” comes to the 9:30 Club on October 13th, and tickets are available now.  With such a great new album, we can’t wait to see the difference in the type of show since his last visit to echostage around christmas last year.