Artist Spotlight: Flume

During January-February 2016, enroute to dropping me off at middle school, my family was involved in a vehicular accident, where a speeding sedan rear-ended our Sienna at a traffic stop. No one in our family were hurt, and the driver who hit us was a teenage girl who was rushing to high school. Apart from the damage to our car, the insurance required us to get a physical checkup for everyone involved in the accident. 

The very next day, we drove to a doctor with our damaged car, and on the radio played a song with beats and melodies with the likes I have never heard before, and the singer's voice instantly captivated me, even though the lyrics were indecipherable, but when that song was over, I never heard from it again. I would spend the next weeks trying to search up the song. I knew that on Friday in the really-late evening, this radio station would play what they called "the latest hits, under the radar", I would try to tune in every week, but to no avail.  

Months later, near the end of April, that same radio station went on with it's usual friday programming, and the radio personality announced a new song had just came out on 4/20, a song featuring Swedish singer Tove Lo and it's called "Say It", I knew who Tove Lo was before, but her voice in this song was so unfamiliar to me, and then the beat drop hits. It immediately dawned on me that this was the same type of beats that captivated me months earlier. I recited the name of the song over and over in my head, "Say It, with Tove Lo", until I was able to get home and type it on youtube, and on that day, I had discovered a my first favorite artist: Flume. 

Born Harley Streten in Sydney, Australia, Flume would eventually become a pioneer in the future bass movement of the 2010s, alongside his contemporaries, Martin Garrix, Illenium, and others. Right from the get-go, Flume's experimental production has transcended traditional electronic music, creating intricate soundscapes that are way ahead of it's time. 

Flume gained mainstream attention a year after his first, self-titled 2014 studio album, with remixes and collaborations. The notable of these remixes include Lorde's "Tennis Court", Hermitude's "Hyperparadise" and Disclosure's "You and Me".

2016 was a defining year for Flume with the release of his second album, Skin, and arguably when Flume's musical identity has started to shine. This was around the time I discovered his music, with his bold experimentation, haunting melodies, and a sound design that seemed both organic and unnatural at the same time. Skin was a commercial success, and cemented Flume's place as one of the most influential figures in electronic music. 

Since then, electronic music had become mainstream, and as more artists hopped in on the bandwagon and chasing trends, many fans saw the genre becoming too comericialized. Artists such as The Chainsmokers, and Major Lazer filled the airwaves, and electronic music became oversaturated in the latter half of the 2010s. After a hiatus period, Flume would release his mixtape, Hi This Is Flume. Shortened to HTIF, this mixtape breathed fresh air into the genre, and still remains the most complex and nuanced electronic production I have ever heard. The mixtape dropped out of nowhere during my high school algebra class, which was where I listened to it for the first time, and from the start, I was hooked. HTIF is a triumph in the movement, with a perfect tracklist from start to finish, and I wholly recommend a listen through the full mixtape.

The COVID-19 pandemic soon followed, and like all musical artists, Flume's evolution in his signature style was showcased in 2022, with his third studio album, Palaces, which in addition to his experimental and glitchy production, Palaces adds a more meditative and self-reflective quality alongside a sense of storytelling in his music, a notable first. The following year, Flume released two new mixtapes, Things Don't Always Go the Way You Plan and Arrived Anxious, Left Bored, which are compilations of his unreleased works and snippets that fans have always wanted to hear. All of these works made a great addition to his discography, with not a single bad track. These songs came right around the second-half of my undergrad years, and have helped me get through college. 

Like many fans, flume was the most impactful artist to have ever graced my ears, his works have inspired much of my own creative works, from art, to poems, to writing, and will continue to do so for the years to come. I can't wait for what he has next. 

I want to end this spotlight by going back to where it all began, back to that radio and the car ride in our damaged car, back to when everything was new. In a twisted way, I think it would not be possible to me to discover Flume's music, if it weren't for that accident, but who knows? Maybe things happen for a reason. We would not have tuned in to that evening radio program in the first place, and I wouldn't need to turn it on during the consequent weeks, if it weren't for that day, but it happened. I want to end it with the song that started it all: "Never Be Like You, featuring Kai"