He’s baaack! And he’s got some new stuff up his sleeve. Australian electronic producer Flume, or Harley Streten, has popped back into the spotlight with his new release, Hi This Is Flume, after releasing full-length album Skin in 2016. After Skin, he released a few side projects including EPs Skin Companion and Skin Companion II, as well as a very short bundle of tracks called Road to Asia. All of these were cool, the Skin EPs presumably being extras left off of the last album, which kind of confuses me because there were some really good tracks on those. It seems like Streten’s not fully diving back into creating another tried and true album just yet; this new release could arguably be classified as an album, however was possibly entitled a mixtape to highlight the rawness/experimentation/seemingly incompleteness of the collection of works it contains.
It’s no secret that Streten definitely took a different direction on this thing, and perhaps the commercial success of Skin and the decision to call Hi This Is Flume a mixtape gave him the freedom to be more creative and exploratory on such a project. What can I say; it’s weirder, rougher, and appears less geared towards attracting a wider audience than just being kind of fun and disorderly. A lot of songs on here do not have as predictable of executions — they honestly feel kind of all over the place and like the sounds are just being created/bursting into life on the spot. Not only this, but such sounds have a different personality than on older records, noticeably a lot more abrasive and industrial sounding with effects suggestive of metal clanking, machines blowing and other grating/spastic noises beyond that of just sweet and catchy synths/beats. I’ve seen others describe this as more wonky and glitchy, and I’d have to agree with that.
Streten takes said industrial sounds and turns them into something more EDM-inspired and club-fitted, which sure, might seem like a compromise, but I think is wonderful morphing of the two. Strange and complex sounds come together like we see on the last song “Spring” for instance, that literally sounds like metal bending and scraping erratically, layered with popping distortion and ethereal harmonies that create an unexpected combination and quite the euphoric experience. Countless songs on the tracklist incorporate these same kinds of trippy and fragmented manipulations and dynamic beat switch-ups, and the kinds of sounds presented range from ear-piercing synths to alien-like droning to skittish lasers, all fusing with and bouncing off one another. Majority of the songs cap off at the 2-minute mark, so it’s like they’re all just flying by one after another, however still managing to blend and transition really well into each other despite the overall appearance of a mixed bag.
The features on this thing are seriously awesome, with two of my absolute favorite artists jumping on, a.k.a. SOPHIE and JPEGMAFIA, whose experimental and outlandish personalities collab perfectly with Flume on a project like this. Other features including English rapper slowthai, angelic singer KUČKA, and electronic producer Eprom make their exceptional marks on this tracklist as well. Let’s also not forget the visual aspect of this thing; Streten released a music visualizer for Hi This Is Flume on YouTube in pair with the mixtape that features an extraordinary montage of him cruising through many different insanely vast, vibrant, and invigorating landscapes in his decked out car shown on the cover of the tape. It’s pretty wild — he goes from deserts to forests, mountaintops to oceanfronts, and looks as if he’s on the brink of survival on every site. Definitely watch it for an undeniably vivid and electrifying adventure.
All of this being said, I profoundly appreciate Flume stepping out of the trendy, mainstream pop-oriented and borderline rave-esque EDM music that a lot of people categorize him in. The ideas presented on this project place him into a new light, and give us something far more refreshing and unique than on previous works. I really do hope that we get more stuff like this out of this new and evolved Flume persona on future releases, because I’m liking him. A lot. More than I already did. That is all.
Favorite Tracks: Ecdysis, How To Build A Relationship, Wormhole, Voices, Upgrade, Spring
Least Favorite Track: The one that’s just a bunch of weird symbols. That one’s okay.
SOME THOUGHTS ON SOUNDS 
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