Sad Machine - Commentary Porter Robinson

""Sad Machine" was in fact the last song I wrote for the album, um, and I, this was another song that really began with writing that riff. I mean, I had... I had wanted to use that kind of drum sensibility, I wanted something, another thing that was kind of in that 90 BPM space, but I wanted the song to first imply that it was 177 BPM like a drum N bass song 'cause it's like 'dada dada dada dada' and I wanted people to kind of expect that faster beat. And of course, I take it to half time so it's 88.5 BPM, which is around 90. And I really wanted that sort of trick for the song, I wanted to, like make the listener anticipate a drum N bass beat and then not actually do that. And I wrotе that riff while I was in the... I wrote that first lеad melody while I was in that process. And I was like, 'Oh man, well this, this needs to be the hook.' I had also used AVANNA the Vocaloid program, the female robot vocal in this song, for two other songs at this point. I had used it on "Fresh Static Snow" already, and I had made "Goodbye To A World" already which is the last song on the album. And I knew I wanted to kind of embrace her as a signature of the record, and so I started writing this vocal for her, and I tried three or four different things and none of them worked. And finally, I wrote that first, that intro verse, that 'Who survived?' and, uh, then the notion of a human-robot duet occurred to me, and I just knew, knew knew knew I had to do it. And uh, I was trying to think of various common turns of phrase, trying to think of the hook of the vocal, and the song feels very kind of fragile and vulnerable to me. Um, but wistful and nostalgic and stuff, and I knew those were all just keywords, but... um, when I thought of the phrase 'She depends on you', I was like 'Oh man, that's really beautiful.' And I wrote a melody, to that, and lo and behold, we had the hook of "Sad Machine". I think it's a contender for my favourite song on the album. And... I think it's a contender for one of my favourite songs on the album. So, um, I was so happy that I got to release it in advance of the record, because I felt that it really summed up to people what the album was about, in a weird way."