Flume - Hi This Is Flume

Flume's music is ubiquitous—you've probably heard it, even if you didn't know it at the time. Thanks to radio-friendly hits and a chilled-out, trap-influenced sound that's made him popular on streaming services hungry for pleasant background music (" Never Be Like You " has been streamed more than 453 million times), Flume is a lucrative artist. His music's gorgeous sheen, often accompanied by easy pop melodies, is hard to resist, even as the results can lack flair or originality. On his new mixtape,, the artist, AKA Harley Edward Streten, tries to make up for it by exploring novelty and weirdness like never before.My interest inwas piqued by SOPHIE's guest appearance. Sure enough, the SOPHIE-assisted "Voices" is the highlight, mixing white-hot synth zaps and distorted, glitchy percussion with a hummable vocal from Kučka. It's an oasis of melodic pop. But after less than two minutes, we're off again into the wilds of banging drums and bucking basslines. The record's structure means that tracks like "Voices" are fleeting pleasures—presented as a "mixtape,"highlights lots of clever ideas, from the futuristic grime collaboration with the UK rapper slowthai to Flume's track with JPEGMAFIA, who tries to run circles around the slippery beat, messes up, screams "FUCK!" and then starts over again, as if the mixtape's fizzy energy had finally spilled over.often recalls the music of other artists. The intense sound design is not unlike SOPHIE's. "Ecdysis" might bring to mind Hudson Mohawke. "Upgrade" sounds like early Zomby fed through a woodchipper. "Dreamtime" could be an old Los Angeles beat scene track mashed up with shoegaze. There's a trancey remix of SOPHIE's "Is It Cold In The Water?" That the remix is part of the package is telling of Streten's method here. He takes familiar ideas and puts them through his own gauntlet of effects and tics, particularly his muscular sample processing and sudden tonal shifts between smooth and gritty, mashing up the two sides of Flume—the EDM star and the radio-friendly pop songwriter.turns that dualism into complete sensory overload, a feeling that defines the mixtape.is Streten's attempt to position himself as someone who can work with hot rappers and respected electronic music producers alike. Cynical listeners might see it as trend-hopping, but there's a boldness to Streten's production that gives it something more than just commercial appeal. From the EDM kids to underground heads, there's something for everyone on this full-length, which retains Streten's accessibility while also contorting it into agonized shapes. In a way,seems like the anti-streaming album. It makes less sense to pick out certain tracks than to ride the mixtape's hairpin turns and whiplash stop-starts. Coming from an artist who struck oil by digging firmly in the middle ground,is a welcome step towards somewhere less comfortable.