![]() The 42-minute epic brings the full mixtape’s experimental mood to life in brilliant color as Streten explores giant sand dunes, salt flats and other “alien-looking landscapes” in a meme-worthy blue robe and patchwork painted, Sharpie-colored Nissan 300ZX. I saw this silhouette walk over my chest, and it was this huge spider. I was on my iPhone, scrolling on Instagram as you do. I vividly remember laying in bed one night after shooting. “We actually were staying in some seriously remote locations,” he says, “Lots of snakes, lots of spiders, lots of things that can kill you in general. He’d teamed with Skin cover artist Jonathan Zawada on a seven-day shoot that saw the pair explore the beautiful wilderness of Austalia’s southwest coast. There was nothing casual about the accompanying visualizer, though. In the spirit of keeping things casual, Streten dropped Hi This is Flume with no build-up other than a teaser tweet in March of 2019. A remix of Sophie’s “Is It Cold In The Water,” from her Grammy-nominated debut album, is the only non-original piece.įlume Releases 'When Everything Was New' Documentary on YouTube: Watch Streten weaved together bits and pieces of rhythms and noise, striving not for perfection but rather to embrace “some grit and dirt.” Usually the type to insist on doing everything himself, he worked on a few cuts alongside respected peers Eprom and Sophie, both of whom champion a glitched-out, experimental sound whose influence is felt throughout the mixtape. He says his first two albums were slaves to a “grand vision.” Hi This if Flume became an exercise in letting go. Despite 16 of its 17 songs being entirely original material, he called Hi This is Flume a “mixtape” to destress the creative process. So, he gave up on the idea of an album altogether and tricked himself into making it fun. “I had this anxious energy about ‘Is it as good as it can be?’” “I actually wasn’t enjoying doing the music because I was laboring over it so much,” he says. The idea of embarking on another album campaign left him “a bit freaked out” and “scarred.” ![]() Streten supported Skin with two world tours and granted “a billion interviews every day,” the burden of which can be felt in the Hi This is Flume intro, a 30-second collection of radio drops layered into cacophony. Diplo even publicly accused Zedd of ripping it off with his remix of “The Candyman” for an M&Ms ad campaign. Flume’s signature off-center synths began a movement of copy-cats. Skin topped the Dance/Electronic Album Sales chart, while singles “Never Be Like You” featuring Kai and “Say It” featuring Tove Lo landed the producer his first Hot 100 hits. The 2016 Grammy-winning album pushed Streten to a new realm of international stardom. It’s one of my favourite albums of the year so far.Flume's 'Hi This Is Flume' Mixtape Is A Wild Fever Dream Of Awesome: Watch If you like electronic music, you’ll love Flume’s Skin. With that in mind, I want to leave you to listen to Skin without me spoiling some of its best moments. And the final track is… Well, Beck guests on it. The pleasant surprises are part of the journey. Skin is the sort of album that’s worth listening to from beginning to end, with good headphones on, and enjoying while knowing as little as possible about it. I could point to every track on the record and say something great about it. ![]() The beat Flume has come up with is almost completely alien, totally different from what we’re used to hearing. Smoke & Retribution is far from my favourite track on the record, but it’s hard not to talk about it because the production work is so wildly inventive. These tracks are often weaker than the others, if only because the rappers can’t hold a candle to Flume’s production.īut despite that, it’s hard not to recommend those tracks. If there’s ever a rough spot on Skin, it’s some of the rap contributors that appear throughout. It’s Streten’s ability to marry both ambience and production value that makes him such a wunderkind. If he weren’t so good at adding pop inflection to big remixes, he’d be making intellectual electronic ambience like Tycho. There’s a reason Flume is such a success. Yes, there’s lots of music like it, but there’s so little that feels so inventive in its light touches. ![]() It’s an assault, sonically, but it doesn’t feel aggressive so much as it just feels deep and bass-filled. This is an exceptionally thick track, with more layers than I could think to count, and not a single spoken word. It’s so densely produced, so wonderfully assembled, and so much better than everything else coming out of the genre right now that saying anything less feels like a disservice to the album. I say that without hyperbole, or with at least as little hyperbole as possible. Skin might be the electronic album of the year. ![]()
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