"Flicker" | ||||
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Single by Porter Robinson | ||||
from the album Worlds | ||||
Released | July 28, 2014 | |||
Recorded | 2014 | |||
Genre | Synthpop | |||
Length | 4:39 | |||
Label | Astralwerks | |||
Writer(s) | Porter Robinson | |||
Producer(s) | Porter Robinson | |||
Porter Robinson singles chronology | ||||
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"Flicker" is a song recorded by American electronic music producer Porter Robinson. It was released on July 28, 2014 as the fourth single from his debut studio album Worlds (2014). Robinson wrote, produced, and performed the track. Musically, the song contains elements of disco and hip-hop, as well as sampling of soul music. Vocally, the song contains a text-to-speech voice incorrectly translating "never seen" Japanese song titles that have been chopped and screwed in a rap-like style.
An official music video for the single premiered on August 14, 2014, and involves footage of Japan filtered with effects including those of 8-bit video games. The song was well-received from critics, and was a hit on the American Dance/Electronic Songs chart.
"I liked the way it sounded, I liked the rhythm of it, the cadence and the flow, so I decided to keep it. But yeah, that song is kind of a frankensong. It’s one of my prouder moments on the album because it goes so many places, but flows naturally in between them. It has, I think, a great climax, a very powerful and big moment."
With "Flicker", one of Porter Robinson's favorite songs of his debut studio album Worlds (2014), he wanted to experiment with samples of soul music, which he became a fan of ever since he listened to his favorite album, Daft Punk's second studio record Discovery (2001). The result was a hip-hop-style instrumental that he felt was "incomplete" with only drums and the phased samples. He didn't initially plan "Flicker" to be a track on Worlds until some time later when he was using a translation website to translate "song titles that would never be seen" incorrectly into Japanese, and then put the Japanese text into a text-to-speech program for it to be converted into a WAV file for him to "cut it into a rap" which he called a "charming little thing". Finally, he composed the lead melody and chord progression.