Porter Robinson is finally giving himself permission to be human, though this road to acceptance was not without bouts of darkness.

It’s been nearly a decade since the GRAMMY-nominated DJ/producer’s 2011 debut project, the Spitfire EP, helped ignite North America’s explosive fascination with EDM—its instantly recognizable synth stabs and pulsing electro beats brought him to EDC that year, when he was just 18 years old. Then in 2014, his first album, Worlds, left its transformative mark on the genre, igniting a trend among electronic tastemakers to experiment with new sounds, many shifting focus away from festival bangers to create bodies of work packed with bona fide passion.

The years surrounding these divergent releases were defined by tireless tour schedules and the constant question: “What’s next for the wunderkind from Chapel Hill, North Carolina?” When one spends every waking moment poring over work, burnout is the only reasonable outcome. For Robinson, that realization came after years of battling depression and his own crippling fear that he’d never produce worthwhile art again. (Though fans of his trance-leaning alias Virtual Self or his powerhouse Shelter (LIVE) Tour in which he shared the stage with Madeon surely have rebuttals.)

“Self-compassion and being kind to myself, those are all things that don't come naturally to me,” Robinson shares candidly. “But when I'm able to get there, it's so good.”

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His newest LP is a testament to that fact. An exploration of his deeply personal journey in regaining his confidence, Nurture is a welcome collection of sunny productions, mellifluous piano chords and nature-laced soundscapes which offer ears exactly what its namesake promises. A foil to the dreamy, far-away sounds of Worlds, Nurture is (as Porter calls it) “intimate” and “up-close,” its instrumental elements and crackling lo-fi aesthetic a clear departure from past styles, yet distinctly Porter at the same time.

Fans recently had the chance to experience Nurture (LIVE) during Secret Sky, an online music festival created during the pandemic as a virtual alternative to his in-person gathering Second Sky, which will return to Berkeley, California for it’s second installment on September 17 and 18. Robinson sat down with the Recording Academy to discuss the album’s three-year metamorphosis, how he creates his multifaceted live performances, and what he hopes fans will take away from this musical lesson in perseverance and finding peace.

Was there a definitive moment where you shifted from feeling unable to create music to recognizing that you had something solid in the works?

For a project of this scale, those breakthroughs tend to happen over time, and little by little. One of the first moments where I could say things started to seem like they were getting better was in, I think, 2017. I had really not left my studio for some time, and my manager and my girlfriend were both like, “It's time to leave.” To my mind at that time it made no sense at all. I thought, “How am I going to do the only thing that I'm trying to do—make music again—if I'm not in my studio?” It felt like anything besides working was a waste of time. And that was one of the truly pathological beliefs I had to work through.

I ended up going to Japan with my girlfriend for a few months, and I had a studio rented just in case I wanted to try to make music. That was where I had one of my first breakthroughs and it wasn't visible to me at the time but what was happening was that I was basically running on empty in terms of inspiration and staring at a blank canvas and expecting something to spring out. It was a really kind of egocentric way of thinking about creativity, because I think for me, creativity is actually more like I find something new that I love, or something new that I haven't tried before, and it gets filtered through my senses and experiences and habits and it comes out the other side as something novel.

I started forcing myself to do new things and forcing myself to spend time not working. When I was there, that was when I wrote the chorus of “Look at the Sky,” which ended up being the lead single.

The lyrics to “Look at the Sky” and “Musician” obviously speak very much to this transformation, from the burnout to the breakthrough. Did the words or the beats come first?

Every song begins with the instrumental for me. That's how I've always worked, and I think maybe it has to do with coming from an electronic music background. I've actually thought about it—maybe I should try just writing a song first and then producing it second?

The only song on the album that I can say was written in that way would maybe be the song “Blossom,” because it's really stripped down. It's a ballad and it's a love song. It's just me and a piano over which I'm playing an acoustic guitar sound.

I can't move on until I have something in the instrumental that makes me want to bathe in the music, like live there. I'm looking for a sound that just feels like it fills the hole in my heart. And with “Musician” I definitely had that.

Whenever I have that breakthrough, I always do this thing where I walk back and forth in my studio and just listen to it super loud over and over and over and I'm like, “Wow, this is it, this is the best feeling ever.” I remember writing the beat instruments in the beginning and just being so excited and [thinking] I have to do this song right and ended up taking a year from that point to actually finish the song.

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“Wind Tempos,” on the other hand, has no words. What inspired you to include ambient productions on Nurture?

I've mentioned before how one of the first inspirations for Nurture was this artist Takagi Masakatsu who made the soundtrack for this movie called Wolf Children which hit me at a really pivotal point in my life.

I'm always trying to make music that feels beautiful. For whatever reason, that's what calls to me. And the things that I found really beautiful in the past were these really big, epic, wide sounds that felt far away, and sort of dreamlike and imaginary. And when I heard the soundtrack for Wolf Children—everything feels so close. It’s almost like ASMR piano music.

I remember feeling so inspired writing “Wind Tempos” and thinking, you know, there's no chorus, there's no drop, are people gonna think this is an interlude? But I feel so grateful that a good chunk of my audience [are] treating it as the main course.

What steps were involved in creating the Nurture (LIVE) audio-visual experience?

In the case of Nurture (LIVE), it began with commissioning visuals. I needed a whole lot of video content to put on the screens, you know? And so, I'll typically put together some references and boards and inspiration and some descriptions and we'll put out these feelers to various visual artists. I’ll pay them and commission little 15-second clips of video content, and then I'll do that throughout the year.

As soon as I turned in the album, I started thinking about how I wanted to arrange a live show. The initial plan was to leave the music really untouched and before I knew it I had re-edited all the songs and made little adjustments. I'll produce the live versions of the songs. The next step from there is making it so that I can perform them live, so pulling out certain pieces so I can play them on the piano or on Ableton Push or on the keyboard, and pulling out vocals so that I can sing and recreate all my vocal effects that I use, because I prominently, on this album, use this [effect] where I pitch the vocals up, and making sure I was able to do that live.

The instruments that we have on stage are curated based on what's really needed for the set, and I knew there was going to be a lot of piano for this one so I wanted to have a big piano set piece that would be like a central part of the stage. And then the next step after that is, is taking all the visuals that we've commissioned and editing them to the music that I created for these live versions. And then I just rehearse and rehearse, and we troubleshoot.

So it takes a village to bring this performance to life?

It’s a big collaboration with a bunch of really talented artists. Some of the people who are working on this live show with me, like for example Ben Coker my Lighting Director, or Ryan Sciaino a.k.a. Ghost Dad, who's my VJ, I've been working with them for like 10 years, since my first EP, Spitfire.

You’ve come to the realization that constant work can stifle creativity. So, what activities will you always make room for in your life?

It is easy for me to lapse into being a bit of a workaholic and putting pressure on myself. Things that I think I have to make room for are being a present partner and doing things with Rika. That's of really high value to me and I always make room for the two of us to spend time together and that's just so important to me, and having time with family.

And forcing myself to experience media! This is so random, but ever since I was a teenager I’ve had a weird anxiety around the idea of watching movies. When someone asks, “Do you want to watch this movie?” I get this gut wrenching anxiety [because I feel like] I don't have an hour and a half to do this, like, I need to be working. So I'm trying to force myself to watch stuff, and listen to new albums and go to places I haven't been before, whenever that is safe.

A big thing for me I think is actively pursuing new things to love. I think it's a big part of being an artist that can fall by the wayside. I've always been a scientifically-minded type, but once I started actually coming to understand mindfulness and meditation—it's genuinely life changing stuff! And so I have to add, that is something I always try to make space for too.

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“All we need is already here” is the motto of the album. It’s also been something we’ve had to remind ourselves of during the pandemic. What do you want people to do with this message now?

I think gratitude is a huge thing that I feel coming out of the pandemic and that I want people to feel when they listen to Nurture. And what I mean by that is [having] an appreciation for the extreme beauty and magic that there is all around us, in reality. I was so preoccupied with the idea of escapism and of going to this imaginary world that I think I sort of lost sight of how magical and mystifying our [real] world is.

Food is a place of comfort for many, so, of all the bites you munched on in the studio, what would you say was the “official snack food” of Nurture?

I'm gonna pare it down to three things. It would be these Quest Protein Chips, seaweed snacks, and then Oreos. Oreos are for the moment of weakness, and the other two are for the moments of strength.

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Curtis Jones is a dance music legend, whose multiple monikers only begin to demonstrate his deep and varied influence in the genre.

Jones has been active as a producer and DJ for decades, and is among a cadre of dance music acts forging a connection between the genre's origins and its modern iterations. Crucially, he  joined Chicago house legends Honey Dijon and Terry Hunter on Beyoncé's house-infused RENAISSANCE, providing a sample for "Cozy." He’s also produced tracks with house favorites Chris Lake and Oliver Heldens, and DJed with Dom Dolla and John Summit.

Jones contributed to the aforementioned collaborations, young and old, as Green Velvet. He’s been releasing dance hits like "Flash" and "Answering Machine" under that name since the mid- '90s. He is also currently a staple of the live circuit, his signature green mohawk vibing in clubs and festivals around the globe — including at his own La La Land parties in Los Angeles, Denver, Orlando, and elsewhere.

Green Velvet is appropriately braggadocious, even releasing the popular "Bigger Than Prince" in 2013. But by the time Jones had released the heavy-grooving tech house track, his artistry had been percolating for decades as Cajmere.

Where Green Velvet releases lean into acid house and Detroit techno, Cajmere is all about the traditional house sound of Jones’ hometown of Chicago. When Jones first debuted Cajmere in 1991, Chicago’s now-historic reputation for house music was still developing. Decades after the original release, Cajmere tracks like "Percolator,” have sustained the Windy City sound via remixes by prominent house artists like Will Clarke, Jamie Jones, and Claude VonStroke.

"I love doing music under both of my aliases, so it’s great when fans discover the truth,” Jones tells GRAMMY.com over email. Often, Jones performs as Cajmere to open his La La Land parties, and closes as Green Velvet. 

But beyond a few scattered performances and new tracks, Cajmere has remained dormant while Green Velvet became a worldwide headliner, topping bills in Mexico City, Toronto, Bogotá and other international dance destinations. He’s only shared two original releases as Cajmere since 2016: "Baby Talk,” and "Love Foundation,” a co-production with fellow veteran Chicago producer/DJ Gene Farris.

This year, Jones is reviving Cajmere to headliner status with his new live event series, Legends. First held in March in Miami, Jones' Legends aims to highlight other dance music legends, from Detroit techno pioneers Stacey Pullen and Carl Craig, to Chicago house maven Marshall Jefferson. 

"My intention is to shine a light on those who sacrificed so much to keep house music alive," Jones writes. "The sad reality is that most of the legendary artists aren’t celebrated or compensated as well as they should be."

Given that dance music came into the popular music zeitgeist relatively recently, the originators of the genre — like the artists Jones booked for his Legends party — are still in their prime. Giving them space to perform allows them to apply the same innovation they had in the early '90s in 2024.

Jones says the Miami Legends launch was an amazing success."Seeing the passion everyone, young and old, displayed was so inspiring."

Curtis Jones, center, DJs at the Miami Legends party ┃Courtesy of the artist

The first Legends party also served as a celebration of Cajual Records, the label Jones launched in 1992 as a home for his Cajmere music. Over the past three decades, Cajual has also released tracks from dance music veterans such as Riva Starr, as well as contemporary tastemakers like Sonny Fodera and DJ E-Clyps. 

Furthermore, Jones’ partnership with revered singers such as Russoul and Dajae (the latter of whom still performs with him to this day) on Cajual releases like "Say U Will” and "Waterfall” helped to define the vocal-house style.

Like the Cajmere project, Cajual Records has been moving slower in recent years. The label has only shared four releases since 2018. True to form, though, Jones started another label; Relief Records, the home of Green Velvet's music, shared 10 releases in 2023 alone.

Jones says he's been particularly prolific as Green Velvet because "the genres of tech house and techno have allowed me the creative freedom I require as an artist."

Now Jones is making "loads of music” as Cajmere again and recently signed a new distribution deal for Cajual Records. The true sound of Chicago is resonating with audiences in 2024, Jones says, adding "it's nice that house is making a comeback."

Jones remembers when house music was especially unpopular. He used to call radio stations in the '80s to play tracks like Jamie Principle's underground classic "Waiting On My Angel,” only to be told they didn’t play house music whatsoever. In 2024, house music records like FISHER’s "Losing It” were certified gold, and received nominations for Best Dance Recording at the 66th GRAMMY Awards. Jones is embracing this popularity with open arms.

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"The new audience it’s attracting is excited to hear unique underground-style house records now. This is perfect for my Cajmere sets,” Jones says. "I never saw Green Velvet being more popular than Cajmere, and both sounds being as popular as they are even today.” 

While Jones is finding success in his own artistic endeavors, he points to a general lack of appreciation for Black dance artists in festival bookings. Looking at the run-of-show for ARC Festival, a festival in Chicago dedicated to house and techno music, legendary artists play some of the earliest slots. 

For the 2023 edition, Carl Craig played at 3 p.m on Saturday while the young, white John Summit, closed the festival the same night. In 2021, the acid house inventor, Chicago’s DJ Pierre, played the opening set at 2 p.m. on Saturday, while FISHER, another younger white artist, was the headliner.

In 2020, Marshall Jefferson penned an op-ed in Mixmag about the losing battle he is fighting as a Black DJ from the '90s. He mentions that younger white artists often receive upwards of $250,000 for one gig, whereas he receives around $2,000, despite the fact that he still DJs to packed crowds 30 years after he started.

Jones is doing his part to even the playing field with Legends, and according to him, things are going well after the first edition. "Seeing how much respect the fans have for the Legends was so special,” Jones says. "Hopefully they become trendy again.” 

The story of Curtis Jones is already one of legend, but it is far from over. "I feel it’s my duty to continue to make creative and innovative tracks as well as musical events. I love shining the light on new upcoming and emerging artists as well as giving the originators their proper dues,” Jones says. 

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Since Nia Archives came on the scene in 2020, she has been making noise.

The 24-year-old native of Northern England produces jungle — the dance subgenre known for its loud, raucous breakbeats — and her achievements in her short career (figuratively) match the volume of her chosen style.

Over four years, Nia Archives has released tracks with tens of millions of Spotify streams like "Headz Gone West" and "Sober Feelz," started her own event series, Up Ya Archives, and become friends with the jungle originator Goldie. Nia also closed a stage at Coachella 2023, and opened for Beyoncé during the London RENAISSANCE tour show.

Nia’s also made significant strides for equality in dance music. In 2022, she wrote a letter to Britain’s MOBO (Music Of Black Origin) Awards imploring them to include a dance and electronic music category. In response, not only did they add the category that same year, but Nia won it.

For as much noise as she’s made in recent years, Nia always makes room in her life for contrast. Out April 12, Nia Archives' debut album, Silence Is Loud, the singer, producer, and DJ shows that there is just as much power in the quiet.

"Silence can be weakness for some people: You didn't say what you wanted to say; you were too weak to make noise," Nia tells GRAMMY.com. "But it can also be powerful. Keeping your silence. Holding your tongue and not saying what might not have been beneficial." 

This contrast is central to Nia’s music, and sees new heights on Silence. Her sweet, ringing voice counters the heaviness of jungle beats, while lighter genres are layered over fast-moving breaks. On tracks "Cards On The Table" and "Out of Options," the melodic foundation is built on Britpop-esque acoustic guitar chords. On the album's title track, Nia contrasts massive kick drums and high-pitched squeals, with softer, heartfelt lyrics detailing her dependence on her little brother.

GRAMMY.com spoke to Nia Archives about finding balance in contrast, her writing process, and making noise in the near-silent U.S. jungle scene.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

The hallmark of jungle music is busy breakbeats. How do you incorporate the concept of silence into the genre?

Jungle is so chaotic and intense. That's one of the things I've always loved about the music — the hectic drum patterns. But in my music, the songwriting is always quite emotional with a lot of meaning in it. Bringing the two together always makes something quite interesting. 

With this project, I really wanted to focus on songwriting. I took the time to research the great songwriters from the Beatles to Amy Winehouse, Radiohead, Blur. Kings of Leon were a huge inspiration to me throughout this project as well. 

In the past, a lot of music I was writing was quite surface-level. I wasn't going as inward as I could; maybe out of fear. The process of this project was different. 

I'd write the songs in bed in the morning, and then make the drum patterns on my laptop. I’d take my little demo [to my friend and producer Ethan P. Flynn] and we’d make the song in like three hours. That process really worked for me because it meant I could really get deep. 

I'd write loads of sh-t lyrics before I got to the good lyrics. In studios, it’s hard to get all the rubbish thoughts in your head and say them in front of people. So I quite enjoyed the privacy of writing in bed and taking it to Ethan. We’d just have fun and bang out all the tunes. 

How did the work of the Beatles and Radiohead manifest when you were making the album?

I've got really eclectic taste in music. I love jungle, that's my bread and butter, but I’ve always found fun in fusing genres together to make something new. 

I really enjoy deep-diving into the Beatles, Blur or Radiohead, [and] listening to the structures and the instrument choices. There are certain things that make them what they are, especially Blur with Britpop. I was listening to the Ronettes and a lot of Motown. I went to Detroit last year, and I got to go to the Motown Museum. I found that really inspiring; those productions, it's crazy what they did with what they had.

I'll never be able to make music how the people that I listen to make it — especially when you bring in jungle beats and 170 BPM. It's always gonna be a slightly off-kilter version of the original inspiration. But I think that makes something quite fun and unique.

Blur's Damon Albarn also leads Gorillaz, opening him up to all manner of collaborations. What would you think about being on a Gorillaz track at some point?

It'd be a dream come true! If there's anybody that I'm trying to get to listen to my album. It's definitely Damon Albarn. I'm actually gonna send him an unsolicited vinyl just because I really love his music. He's an incredible musician, artist, everything. He's a big inspiration to me.

You’ve said in previous interviews that jungle is "anything over a breakbeat." Why do you think contrasting sounds can fit so well over a breakbeat?

I think jungle, especially in the '90s, was so futuristic. The breaks themselves, depending on how you construct them, are so versatile. The breaks have so much room to go in whatever direction you want. You can go really heavy, or you can go really light and atmospheric. 

All of the original junglists have their own style. They weren't all trying to be the same. They were very strong in their identity, which is one of the other things I love about it.

What kind of modern music are you excited about integrating into jungle?

I quite like a lot of happy hardcore stuff, which is not new. I really enjoy those melodies [and you don't really hear that sound as much. I really love disco; I'd like to do something like that. 

You’re one of the only artists, if not the only jungle artist of this generation who has built an audience in the U.S. You’ve played Coachella and headlined U.S. tours. How does it feel to be a driving force in introducing jungle to America?

Older generations know about jungle. But I feel like a lot of the young kids in the U.S. are definitely discovering it, which is super exciting. It's really cool to build community in America as well. Every time I've played in America I get the proper ravers down. 

A big part of jungle is the culture and the community that comes with it. We have such a rich culture in the UK; we're kind of spoiled. Whereas in America it feels like people who like that music, they're still building [community].

I love playing in New York cause they've got a lot of new-gen junglists. There's a few new producers who are like 20-21 [years old] who I always hang out with when I go to New York. It's really cool to see their take on jungle, 'cause the American producers that I know have a different view of it.

In the UK we have so many jungle nights and so many raves constantly. In America, those jungle nights feel quite special and one-off. I feel really excited to keep coming back and keep building that community in America. I'm excited to see all the new producers that come up in the next couple of years, as well.

Have you supported any new American junglists by inviting them to perform at an Up Ya Archives party or playing out their tracks live?

There's a kid called Dazegxd. I got him on my Lot Radio takeover for Up Ya Archives. Then he actually played at the Knockdown Center [in Queens, NY] for me which was amazing.

I've booked him to play his first London show at an Up Ya Archives party. That's a really meaningful connection to me 'cause he's quite young and he's so excited about the music; he's proper geeking out about jungle. I love people like that because I'm also a geek of this music.

I'm looking forward to meeting more people like that. I love creating friendships and relationships with people and getting them to play my parties. 

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Where do you see your career, and jungle as a whole, going in the future?

I'd love to keep building on what I'm doing. My album, I'm hoping, is my flag in the sand moment for who I am as an album artist. There's a lot of fusions, and I'm hoping that people can hear it and understand where I'm trying to go.

I hope to make more albums and keep traveling the world. I've got a lot of exciting touring coming up this year. If I can do what I'm doing now, but a bit better in five years, I'll be a very happy person. 

My goal in life, similar to Goldie, is to do what I'm doing for the rest of my life. They've been doing it for 30 years. People come and go, but they've held it down for as long as they have, and they're still as relevant as they were 30 years ago.

That's what I want in my career. To still be able to play music and make music when I'm like 50. That is the real goal.

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The album cover photo for Mount Kimbie’s fourth LP, The Sunset Violent, captures a mundane yet curious slice of life: A car nearly tipped over and abandoned on the side of a road lined with towering cornfields. According to members Kai Campos and Dom Maker, it was taken by photographer T-Bone Fletcher as part of a project documenting his travels across the U.S. 

"There was something so peculiar about the whole scene," Maker tells GRAMMY.com, "and just kind of oddly unsettling whilst being quite peaceful at the same time." Adds Campos, "It's just such a great start to a story as well."

The making of The Sunset Violent could be its own arthouse film. In 2021, the two Brits drove to the California desert at the height of summer. Their AirBnB, with its cornhole board and ping-pong table, possessed the energy of an old frat house. The horizons were endless; entertainment options were less so, which provided the focus they needed to create. Six weeks of melting heat, arid landscapes, and wandering imaginations became sun-baked into the album’s nine tracks  — a collection of surrealist short stories, hazy guitars, and indie-rock textures that feel vast, almost exposing, and deeply rooted in its space.

"I think when you see the horizon just go on forever, it does something to your brain that creates space for ideas," Campos says. "It's definitely the most American record we've made."

Those Yucca Valley creations seem a world away from the London dubstep scene in which Maker and Campos launched Mount Kimbie. Their 2010 debut LP Crooks & Lovers pushed genre boundaries through delicate and intricate electronic compositions more suited for headphones than subwoofer-rattling. Their next two albums incorporated live instruments, original vocals, and more traditional song structure, and with live shows a bigger focus, they recruited drummer Marc Pell and keyboardist Andrea Balency-Béarn for their touring band. 

Maker and Campos' paths even diverged for a time. Maker relocated to Los Angeles in 2016 and produced for James Blake, Jay-Z, Travis Scott, and others, while Campos turned to DJing. On their 2022 double album MK 3.5: Die Cuts | City Planning, each worked on his half independently of the other, building two worlds inhabited by separate sonic ecosystems.

Their desert reunion showed them the way forward, together, to a sound and style they "want to keep doing more of, which we haven't really had before," Maker says. That included Pell and Balency-Béarn officially joining Mount Kimbie, and Maker returning to London.

Ahead of the album’s April 5 release, Maker and Campos sat down with GRAMMY.com to chronicle their "inevitable" journey to The Sunset Violent.

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

Dom, it’s funny that you made this album, one so rooted in California, right before moving back to London. Is it me or are California albums a rite of passage for bands these days?

Dom Maker: It’s quite strange because we didn't really attach that much to the trip to California when we were out there. But in retrospect, and in actually speaking about this record in interviews and with friends, we started to realize how much that experience really bled into it; sort of the end of an era there for me. So it felt good to come away with a document of that period of time in my life.

Kai Campos: Like Dom said, we hadn't really considered how American in aesthetic it was. I think when you grow up in the UK and other parts of the world, you kind of inherit a lot of American culture at the same time, so you're always having this slightly removed relationship with it. The guitar music that I listened to when I was thinking about this album was mostly American, and it was just an interesting place to think about writing from. Over the last 10 years or longer, [we have] been so associated with London, so it was interesting to remove ourselves from that familiar situation in some ways.

That area of California in particular, so close to L.A., is very accessible and you can be there in a couple of hours in the car. At the same time, it feels really remote and unique and special, the landscapes and stuff like that. 

Can you tell me more about the guitar music you were listening to while making this album?

Campos: Sometimes there's songs or bands that I’ll hear one time, years and years before, and it'll always be in my head that I'm going to try and take whatever experience I had from listening to that and try and make some work. So there's all these little bits and pieces that collect over the years until there's enough of a space where I feel like, okay, I feel like I have a voice in this. Sometimes it's just one song from a band. There’s a track called "Rena" by Sonic Youth that I heard more than a decade ago that’s always been in the back of my head: One day, I'm going to try and rip that off.

Then there's other things to do with the sound of the guitars. There's a band called Land of Talk that has this super flat, compressed guitar sound that just sparked something in my head. And then more jam band, almost comical American guitar music, like NRBQ. All of these things just sit around in the soup in your brain until you find a way to articulate them yourself. I think the record in general is the friction between being British and how you interact with American culture in general.

Can you expand on that?

Campos: When you're a kid in the UK — I'm thinking early to mid-'90s — America is a bit of a fairytale, and it seems so shiny and exciting. Obviously, because it's a real place, it's way more complicated than that. And so there's a little bit of the fairytale kind of crumbling. At the same time [there's] Dom's perspective as somebody who had been living there for a long time. So it wasn't a conscious thing, but when we reflected on the record, we realized that there may be a theme here.

Maker: For me it was skating. All the skate stuff that I watched was from the States and it was like, oh my god, it's sunny all the time there. And that alone was amazing. 

I thought that America would be way more similar to where I'm from, the way things worked and the people I would be around. And that's completely not the case. That kind of friction, I found, was quite juicy as inspiration — not necessarily friction in a negative sense, but just that abrasiveness between my understanding of the world and the world around me. Even more so when you go to the desert  — the deepest, darkest like Yucca Valley in California  — that really made a lot of this record flourish.

The Sunset Violent is a lyric from your song "Dumb Guitar." It’s a visceral phrase that stirs me even if I can't quite grasp what it means. How do you interpret it, and how does that inform the record?

Maker: Honestly, that's kind of exactly how I feel, the way you feel about it. We picked out a few lyrics that we liked; it’s really not really a well-thought-out sort of title or anything. It just felt fitting for the sound and for that slight friction: The peacefulness of a sunset, and then the violence doesn't seem to fit, but it kind of does in a weird way. 

A big part of the record in general for us, especially for me with the lyric writing, was trying to set a scene that was a little bit unorthodox and maybe even slightly comical. So yeah, "the sunset violent" just felt like the one line that really stuck out. I love it more and more every time I think about it.

Is there a lyrical thread throughout the album, or is each song its own chapter?

Maker: I think each song is definitely its own short story. Some of my favorite writing that I've ever read is by Roald Dahl. A lot of his adult writing is brilliant because each story just casts a spell on you and takes you to a completely different place. With this album, I wanted to really tap into my love of short stories and writing that's very much fiction. It has some grounding in reality, but there's that fictional feel to it. 

I suppose it’s a new thing for me because I've really never written lyrics for this project. There's never been any sort of lead vocal from the band internally. So it was quite difficult for me initially to try and figure out what I wanted to say. Then I was like, well, actually I don't really want to say anything, and that was quite freeing in itself. 

I read about how the Pixies wrote "Where is My Mind?" — I was like, where are these f—ing insane lyrics from? — and he's like, "Oh, I was snorkeling in the Bahamas and I was just writing about a fish that I saw." The idea of just letting go of trying to write about something was really, really good for me. Absorbing surroundings and trying to feed some of the visuals that I was seeing into the writing was the main thing I wanted to do.

What specific visuals stand out?

Maker: I think the world of "Dumb Guitar": The idea of this slowly degrading, failing relationship and it all kind of coming to a head in this weird resort in China on a beach. I've never been to a beach in China, but I imagine everything's a bit artificial. 

What song would you say became the core of the album? The track where you realized, yes, this is the direction that we should go?

Campos: Yeah, there's a few different moments. You need that initial thing to happen where you get really excited and have enough of a vision to move in a certain direction, and that probably was "Dumb Guitar." 

There were maybe a couple of false starts before that. But ["Dumb Guitar"] was the first one that in terms of the songwriting made me a bit uncomfortable. You try to take that as a good sign [that] you're doing something new to you. To me that was more conventional songwriting, which I would never have done in the past. Even something as simple as a chord that leads into the chorus: It makes the human monkey brain feel good.

That was one of the first ones that Dom had written, and that was such an exciting moment to hear the lyrics and song really come to life. Writing [instrumentation] with vocals in mind is so much more freeing. The vocals are doing so much that you don't have to; you can work in a more subtle way and not try and demand everyone's attention all the time with the music. 

I think "Fish Brain" was another one that really came together. That was probably the one that we worked with Andrea very closely in finishing the song and it really helped us push it to another level. 

How would you say The Sunset Violent evolves Mount Kimbie’s sound from your 2017 album Love What Survives?

Campos: [Our goal was to] write in a way that was more direct. Obviously that can mean lots of different things, but whatever the shortest route for an idea to get executed was what I thought would be interesting to do. I guess that really means [being] more accessible. 

But obviously it wasn't a shot at commercial success. It just so happened that the idea of writing songs that were catchy— just really as simple as they could be, while still being interesting and having quality. That was the major difference from the work that we've done in the past… You can kind of see the evolution of the band through the records. To me, this one feels quite fundamentally different in the way that the songs are written.

In what way?

Campos: I think just the simplicity, or the feeling of simplicity. What I realized over the years was that the pop music that I really enjoyed, or the songwriting that I really enjoyed, sounded simple. And then when you dig into it and try to deconstruct it, you realize there's actually these very important nuances to it that make it work, but from the listener's perspective, it just feels right. 

So it was just trying to do that: have these songs that make you feel something in your gut, but you don't necessarily need to understand why. 

Your music has evolved so much since Crooks & Lovers. Looking back, are you surprised where you've ended up? Or do you feel it was inevitable?

Maker: Oddly, I was thinking about this today. I think it was actually inevitable because we were just really interested in and excited by a certain style and scene in music when we first moved to London when we were younger; 2009, 2010, that era. It was a fascination that really is in just a place and time. 

A lot of that reminds me of growing up, us figuring out London, moving from small towns to the big city, and everything about it being exciting. But I think the fact that we immediately were like, we need to play this live said a lot. Through the years that's been a huge thing, the live show, and trying to approach these songs live has always been something we've really enjoyed doing, and we've got so many amazing memories doing it.It sort of naturally has landed us in this scenario where the sound that we have at the moment feels like something that we want to keep doing more of, which we haven't really had before. We've made records and it's been a long process making them, then when you get to the end, it's sort of like, we should find something new. But, this time, we finished the record and immediately there's still this burning energy to keep going with this sound and writing style. It feels really good and exciting, and I'm glad that the road led us to where we're at now. 

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Before last year, the closest French producer Madeon and Dutch DJ San Holo ever came to collaborating was touring together in 2016. But on Nov. 5, the two dance stars found themselves closing out the 2023 Vision & Colour Music Festival in Wuhan, China, together after a last-minute cancellation from the original headliner — and their unexpected set was so magical, they're bringing their chemistry to Miami's Ultra Music Festival just four months later.

Madeon and San Holo — whose birth names are Hugo Leclercq and Sander van Dijck, respectively — will play a back-to-back set as headliners of Ultra's intimate amphitheater-style Live Stage on March 23. Like their VAC performance, the joint Ultra set will offer hard electronic beats, live mash-ups and fan-favorite cuts from both of their catalogs, curated by each artist in an attempt to impress the other.

"I've noticed a trend in dance music where audiences are attracted to moments — things that feel spontaneous, like back-to-backs that you didn't expect, shows that are announced very late," Madeon tells GRAMMY.com. "There's something about 'You had to be there.' As a performer, I want us to feel that energy."

San Holo echoes, "This all came from spontaneity. As long as we keep that alive, people are going to have an amazing time." 

Ahead of their Ultra set, Madeon and San Holo caught up with GRAMMY.com to hear more about their serendipitous partnership  — and why it's not guaranteed to ever happen again.

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I'm excited that you're bringing this joint effort back. I was so intrigued when you did the set in China. 

Madeon: The way it came about is probably why it ended up being so special. We were both in China playing our respective shows for this festival, VAC. I played Good Faith Forever, Sander played a DJ set hybrid. We were about to fly back, but the headliner that was supposed to close the entire festival was sick. They had this big fireworks show already, a huge production, and then they didn't have an artist. 

They asked us about a back-to-back, and we were like, "Well, that sounds kind of fun." Basically, 24 hours before going on stage, we were like, "We're gonna headline this mega festival and create a whole new show from scratch," which was a little reckless. I think the sleep deprivation and the time zone change probably played a part. 

Sander and I met up in the hotel room and took some big swings. We made a whole new visual show with a black-and-white camera feed. I was on my laptop making visuals on the way to the stage. Sander and I decided to each have succeeding sections, like 15 minutes each. We did not show each other what we were going to play. We're trying to make sure we would impress each other, like a proper back and forth. 

San Holo: The complicated thing is that Madeon is actually on different equipment. He has his own crazy, secret setup that is insane. He's extremely flexible, and I'm on the CDJs [turntables]. It's like trying to get different machines to talk. We have to really pay attention when we transition from our sections, which was really exciting and challenging.

Madeon: For me, the best part is that when you start playing, I know you're gonna play for 10 minutes or so, which is long enough for me to just dance, have fun and get lost in it. Then after 10 minutes, I think, "Okay, where do I take this next?" It feels very celebratory, and most of what Sander played was music I had never heard before. I felt like it was in the audience partying with everybody whenever he dropped something cool, and hopefully vice versa. 

San Holo: Absolutely. That's a fun thing of back-to-backs. You're like, "What is this?" Normally I would go look at the CDJ, but now I had to look over to this laptop machine with your setup. I was like, "Where can I find the song title?"

Madeon: We were supposed to only play an hour or so, and when we were gearing up for the ending, the festival was like "Do you want to play longer?" We ended up playing an extra 40 minutes completely unprepared. It was very magical. 

We had this handheld camera. Whenever he was playing, I was filming him, then whenever I was playing he was filming me. We looked at the footage and saw the way that it looked, and it felt strong and different. It didn't feel like a typical Madeon show or a typical San Holo show. So it felt true to what it was, as far as this spontaneous idea. It was such a special moment, and so unexpected. We didn't know how fun it was gonna be. 

I'm really shocked to hear this happened so last minute. Listening to the set, it felt like you had put so much thought into mixing your styles.

San Holo: I was a little bit scared, to be honest — like, "Is this gonna work?" But that actually made it so fun.

Madeon: I think if it was earlier in my career I would have been more scared, but we both have enough experience to know we can figure it out as DJs. When I do my live show and I'm singing, it's all super rehearsed — and same for you Sander, right? But when I DJ, I don't like to prepare, because otherwise I'm bored. 

This felt doubly exciting. The risk factor is what makes it real. We were there, we took a risk, and there was this magical memory. 

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So you whipped together this wild concept and the wheels didn't fall off mid-set. Going into this Ultra set, is that now part of the parameters of this project? 

Madeon: We're implementing a little surprise in the show, and we're very excited about that. That one is more planned, but it's also spontaneous — you'll see. We want to make sure it's not exactly what we did in China. 

Sander is just going to tell me the opening and closing song of each of his sections, and then it's my job to find the connection between. It's like a puzzle I'm going to solve, but I'm not going to over-prepare.

San Holo: I've got to talk about your setup. I'm jealous of your setup, because it really allows you to be completely free with the key and the BPM tempo. You can just flip it in whatever way you want. 

Madeon: But I'm jealous of your setup, because CDJs are everywhere. It's so convenient. They feel great to use. 

San Holo: It's just harder with CDJs to actually pitch things. You can pitch up tracks, and it's the Ableton algorithm so it still sounds pretty good.

Madeon: That's true. Sander sent me a bunch of his acapella and melodies, and I pitched them to the right key, and then I could play them on the launch pad so I could do mashups live. That's not something you can easily do on CDJ.

San Holo: No. I am a bit more prepared. I want to play some tracks I found from some really small artists, for example. I want to put them in the set because I think this is amazing music. People have to hear this.

Madeon: Well, there's one thing you're gonna have to prepare for a lot, that secret moment. I trust your skill there. 

San Holo: The fact that it's scary is also why it's fun. People will feel that too, in the audience.

Madeon: I love going on stage and not knowing exactly how it's going to go. I feel like my favorite moment of the set is going to be something that I did not expect. Certain shows are very prepared. It feels like performing a recital, but like this feels like going to a party for me. We know we're going to run into cool people and hear cool music, and things are gonna happen that are memorable. 

And you're closing out the Live Stage, which is more intimate than the 200-foot Main Stage or the airport hanger-style Megastructure that hold crowds of thousands.

Madeon: I love that stage, the amphitheater — and we have the honor of headlining it, which we're really proud of. That stage is where you get the most control over the look and feel of your show. When you play the main stage, it's so massive, so it has to be a collaboration between who you are as an artist, and what Ultra is. That's awesome, too, but it's fun for us to do the live stage because we can control a bit more of the experience. 

Are you bringing back the black and white camera?

San Holo: I've got to give a lot of credit to Hugo. He has a huge vision regarding visuals. 

Madeon: You also had some great insight. It's cool we were both willing to do something different than our normal show. We want to make sure that, if people have seen our shows a lot of times before, they feel like this is a different, secret, rare experience.

San Holo: You gotta tell about the logo.

Madeon: When I make music, I have a lot of self-doubt and I can be really nervous and work on songs for years. But when it comes to visuals, I tend to be very radical, cutthroat and confident. I will take a thing and then really double down on it. 

When we first were trying to figure out the visuals, the natural idea was to use half of my visuals and half of Sander's, and this didn't feel right. So, I started making those black-and-white things, and one of the first things I made took Sander's logo and my logo and just overlapped them on top of each other to create this abstract shape. I thought it looked cool and had a good gut feeling about it.

San Holo: The first time I saw the logo I was like, "Wow. That's kind of crazy," but I really love and admire the cutthroat approach. That's easier for me in my music sometimes. 

Madeon: If we had used it just a little bit, it would look like a mistake, but if you just commit to it, like "No, this is it," then people trust you. It's all about confidently committing. In the photos, we ended up really liking how everything looked. Some people in China who were there even got that logo tattooed, so it's one of these things where you have to feel the moment, feel the energy in the air at a given time. Again, I think that's where dance music is at right now. It feels more spontaneous, like you react to the magic in the air, and then go with it. Chase that excitement. 

(L-R) Madeon and San Holo at the 2023 Vision & Colour Festival | Photo: Haley Lan

It fits the way you're approaching the music as well. It's the two of you together and you're giving each other space to exist. It's more than the sum of its parts.

Madeon: I think audience members, one of their favorite parts is being with their friends, and [when] there's a song they love, they look at each other and react. As a solo performer on stage, you don't have that, because you know what you're going to play. But because there's two of us, we get to surprise each other. 

That's why I don't want to know too much about what he's going to play. I know he's made some edits to some of my songs, and I'm going to sample some of his songs too, but I want to surprise each other. I think that magic and that excitement is going to make us DJ better.

To give each other that space requires a lot of trust. Where does that come from?

San Holo: We haven't worked alongside each other a lot. I was on the Porter and Madeon Shelter tour [in 2016], and that was a life-changing experience for me. It's not like we call each other every day. If anything, our friendship is starting to really grow as we're doing the music thing together. I know Hugo has been doing this for a long time, and we trust each other in our professionalism. I made a huge mistake on the China stage. I spun back the wrong CDJ at some point, but we know how to fix it. 

Madeon: Yeah, that's the magic. A few years into doing this, you grow this connection with the audience where they trust you and you trust them. Some of my favorite memories on stage have been things going wrong. At the end of the day, it's not about perfection. It's about memorable, beautiful, joyful moments, and once you trust that, and you know that in your heart, you'll always find the path back to something joyful. 

Is this a collaboration you might continue? Is it too early to say?

Madeon: We're looking at returning to China where this began to do it again. The spirit of it needs to be spontaneous and quick. There's no pressure in trying to build something, but you never know. We might have so much fun [at Ultra] that we want to do it a ton. It's more about what feels right. 

Ultra asking us to do this was unexpected. I thought it was gonna be one-and-done. We accidentally created something other festivals were interested in, and now we get to bring it to the United States exclusively at Ultra. 

You never know. It might be a lot of music, maybe a lot of shows, or not. But I would say that people at Ultra, if they want to see this, they should go — because there's no guarantee.

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