One Song, One Tour: Robinson & Madeon's 'Fleeting' Collab After A 10-Year Friendship

Porter Robinson and Hugo "Madeon" Leclercq have formed a post-EDM supergroup. They're touring a spectacular audiovisual live show behind their viral glitch-pop hit, Shelter. But fans should catch them in Australia this February — the Shelter experience is a one-off.

Robinson, from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Leclercq, from Nantes, France, each began as kid bedroom producers — their career trajectories "shockingly similar", Robinson recaps during our three-way phone call. "Hugo and I met online about 11 or ten years ago — so that was way before either of us had any whisper of a music career. We were both on music production forums. We were the young guns doing it. So Hugo was 11 or 12, I was 14 or 15. In a way, we had a kind of rivalry."

Being underage, the pair independently created electronic music inspired by, not club culture, but video games and crossover acts like Daft Punk. As such, they'd bring fresh perspectives to the scene, culminating in high concept albums. In 2014, Robinson — Skrillex his patron early on — presented the dazzling Worlds. The next year, Leclercq aired Adventure. Both have collaborated with others — Robinson teaming with Zedd and Mat Zo, and Leclercq lending his production prowess to Lady Gaga and Coldplay. Though associated with the electro-house sub-genre "complextro" (coined by Robinson), they're now more interested in "songs". "I've seen so many micro-genres come and go that the emergence of a new one doesn't get me as excited as it once did," Robinson remarks. "But songs are timeless."

"We were the young guns doing it. So Hugo was 11 or 12, I was 14 or 15. In a way, we had a kind of rivalry."

Throughout, Robinson and Leclercq exchanged music and feedback. Their friendship has transcended music. "Hugo and I can talk endlessly and alienate everyone else in the room," Robinson notes. In August they launched their first collab, Shelter — Robinson supervising its sublime animated film clip. Still, assembling a back-to-back show behind one single is daring. Says Leclercq, "When Porter and I started talking about collaborating, we really were focused on making a song. We didn't think about a tour right away. [But] the more we talked, the more we revisited our discography, the idea for the show came to us."

"Right," Robinson affirms. "It's the two of us really revisiting our own discography — reinterpreting ourselves and reinterpreting one another. It's brand-new. It consists of both [of] us on stage at the same time: playing live, singing, playing keys, triggering samples, [playing] drum pads — the whole works." Since the initial leg of the Shelter Live Tour — encompassing 30-plus North American dates — the combo have tweaked the set. "It's mostly nerdy stuff," Leclercq says. They need to keep it stimulating for themselves. However, the duo are adamant that there won't be an album. "What was attractive to us about this collaboration was that it was gonna be fleeting," Leclercq explains. "It was gonna be one song, one tour — and then nothing more. So we are not making an album and we do not have more music together." They'll part following Coachella. Indeed, Robinson and Leclercq are inherently restive. They also value their own autonomy. "If we kept Shelter going for too long, then the ways that our tastes don't fully overlap would become frustrating," Leclercq says.

Despite its ephemerality, Shelter is proving "beneficial" to the pals' solo work, both already plotting new projects. They're cagey about details. Yet Leclercq has progressed the most. Robinson recently revealed on Twitter that his output slowed in 2015 due to "self-doubt and depression". Today he's positive. "I think most of my and Hugo's most raw artistic ambitions are, to be honest, kinda being expressed outside of Shelter right now in the new music that we're writing. I think that we're both really restless and anxious and have these new ideas that we're really, really amped up about — whereas Shelter we see as being more of, like, a homage to our pasts. Hugo and I have known each other for ten years — and we do see this tour as a way of looking back. But, in a way, we've almost saved some of the things that we really wanna express in the future — we've kept that out of this show so that they'll arrive fully formed in a really solidified vision in the future. So we're censoring ourselves a little bit with this show."

The prodigies have long toured Australia — Robinson last staging his Worlds blockbuster at 2015's Splendour In The Grass. Leclercq fondly remembers 2011's Stereosonic as his premiere international tour. "I was so young!" he chuckles. "My parents were freaked out 'cause I was this minor going literally to the other side of the world... It was the scariest thing. It was great!" Robinson addresses Leclercq, "Hugo, I didn't know your first tour ever was Stereosonic! That's crazy. It's gonna change how I see this tour."