Never be like you
The good old Bon Iver sings his American indie-folk rhythms quite avidly but never delivering a rush of loud music. There is a song from his album “For Emma, Forever Ago” which brought us the nascent of an artist who introduced the genre of Future Bass and blessed the world.
“Only love is all maroon
Gluey feathers on a Flume”
Harley Edward Streten a young chap from Sydney, Australia picked a single word from the lyric above and the rest was history.
“Flume”
This music producer inborn with that mute light brown eyes and some dope palpating beats to astound your heart, personally changed the way I listened to music.
In an age where people follow the EDM basslines with the growing hypertensive beat picking up its pace to only release the deluding drop that everyone awaits, Flume brings out a different class altogether.
Layman term some EDM mainstream hits possessing an enjoyable “Sick Drop”.
But what really is a sick drop?
Oh you dimwit human, pick up a headphone (Strictly Headphones) and envelop yourself to listen to some high beaming music of Harley.
Flume boasts two albums, three EPs, eleven singles, and a mixtape which is slowly ravishing the world of Electronic Dance Music. Tracks like “Helix”, “High Beams”, “Never be like you” unwraps a caliber of having a living entity that is breathing down your ear lobes.
Harley Edward was 8 years old when he was shopping with his dad in a supermarket. A special promotion of Nutri Grain, a cereal brand was taking place, where you could bag a music-making software program as a giveaway. That was the eureka moment in Harley’s life where he felt the thrill of understanding music. Going back home and inserting the software into the computer, he was fascinated by the astounding musical layers, guitar, synthesizer, and vocals.
“The most important thing about music for me is to hear something that I have never heard before in my life,” says Flume while speaking aloud his thoughts of producing music.
His first self-titled album is as pure and raw as his frivolous soul itself, but his fear of fulfilling the expectations of his fans as now that his music is out there, the pressure is tamed upon him across all angles. When the second album “SKIN” was surfaced into the realm of fandom, the epic visual artistry and the cutting edge amplitude that picks up its spirit in each and every track sounded like music ascending from the stars above.
Nathan McLay, Flume’s manager talks about his first time meeting him when they selected Harley out of a pool of 500 breakthrough musicians. He remembers Harley coming out rocketing across the beach surfing and super tanned with thongs on.
One of the major reasons why Flume’s work is so admirable and attractive is how he strives to bring under the audience’s attention this wide variety of amazing artists who settle in the minds of a listener when they feature in his albums. Andrew Wyatt, Isabella, Nick Murphy aka Chet Faker are some of his dynamic collaborators. Names like Vic Mensa, Kucka, Little Dragon, Aluna George, T-Shirt might hardly ring a bell, but you know they have managed to surprise you to think about them as a solo artist once you listen to their Flume tracks.
When the gradually rising pitch of twinkly and wobbly sounds makes you hooked to play tracks like “Take a Chance”, “Smoke & Retribution” on repeat, you start to decipher the gear of how Flume works around his magic of producing some uniquely textured sounds full of thumping weirdness and energy.
“Everyone has the same gear in their music but it’s all about using the gear in a way that it is never supposed to used” declares Flume. The surreal tone and crisp sounds that can be felt in Flume’s music is quite an understatement to label them as just distinctive compared to other producers in the line.
Harley likes to download a lot of biomusic samples. Like doors creaking, coins dropping on the table, etc. He shares his fondness of a Russian kid who records nature sounds. He particularly remembers this one sound of throwing rocks down a metal pipe and how it appeared to be strangely soothing for him to listen.
Harley’s other way to devote his time and effort to work on his music is by simply traveling to explore different places. He is always inbound to do something that he is intriguing passionate about and he does that by simply taking off skating or visiting places like Europe and Spain and writing music in cafes or hostels. His main drive is to get rid of the static mental space and to unblock his creativity.
“I like to be constantly stimulated into fresh locations and surroundings where new things are taking place because that’s where I generate my fresh ideas.”
One day Flume lands in Mexico more than just to celebrate his birthday. It was a very stressful time for him as the pressure was tight and his ultimate escape to work better is by exploring the wilderness. Thus said, traversing in Mexico for five days and growing some mustache, it did prove to be quite an adventurous trip as he wrote some great innovative music.
Jay Ryves, Future Classic: Creative Director, hysterically narrates this one episode of Harley’s spontaneous enigma to work. She shares about this one time, how her house was filled with loud toddlers playing and jumping around with a couple of noisy adults in the room. The scene is absolute chaos, but then comes Harley, announcing “I am gonna work here!”.
When asked the reason behind naming his second album “Skin”, Harley discloses that he felt like he was in his skin while writing for the album and how Skin is closely intimate and organic which is what music is for him.
Another epic quality of “Skin” is its aesthetically gorgeous album art. The ever swirling soft bewitching curves of those pink flowers spreading deliriously with the music in the background simply charm a person enjoying the songs visually and auditorily.
Jonathan Zawada is the man behind Skin’s album art who is a Visual Artist from Australia.
“I love his job,” says flume. “I love his eye for..(hunting for words in his head) I don’t know what he does but he does it incredibly”
Jonathan feels that the 3D flowers would be a perfect match to illustrate the album’s deep trembling music. It could evoke some unreal and real colorations, texturing, playing, chopping, and changing the pattern in between the hard metallic elements that he has used which are sort of impossible to recreate but it slowly and aggressively reaches a phase to fuck it up collaterally.
Since 2017, his recently released music “Hi this is Flume” is this incredulous mixtape containing 13 unrestrained tracks which will screech your tilting heart. It is the underlying details found in each and every track that entices you to keep shuffling the Mixtape to enjoy songs like “Ecdysis”, “High Beams”, “Is it cold in the water”. After all, Harley is constantly challenging himself to present some new sounds to us so, it is a given that we have signed up to listen to something quite idiosyncratic.
Walking with his crew dressed under the sunny sun in this grey linen shirt and laid-back white trousers, Harley pretty much owned the 2016 Coachella when he went full beast mode on. Honestly, I am still tripping on the random horse neigh that emerges in the Lorde- Tennis Court, Flume Remix because who does that!
And, the audience concurs.
“Being in the limelight is cool and awesome to be given an opportunity..(Long pause) but my personality isn’t built for fame”
Hence that’s how alarmed he was when Flume won the Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Album award for ‘Skin’ while facing up against big shots like Tycho, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Underworld. The internet was going nuts when they declared him as a Grammy holder which made them address the album to have brought him one step closer to perfection and rise ahead as an established music producer. “I am proud to represent Australian music” announces Harley beamingly while accepting his Grammy onstage.
Harley notes that a lot of doors have been opened to him after his Grammy win and how his music is getting appreciated worldwide. Future Bass is getting stronger than ever and people are constantly copying him!
Don’t know about you but the door of my ever buzzing heart as a Musiphile will always be open for Flume because, in the end, he believes “Music is just vibrations in the air” and “Helix” constantly vibrates in my soul.
