21 year old Harley Streten doesn’t depress me quite as much as 16 year old Marcel Everett, but he’s gotten quite close. Australian and American producers Flume and XXYYXX respectively, two relative juniors of the electronic scene, are proving that new blood can do two things; energise a genre, and demoralise aspiring twenty-somethings all over the world. Whilst XXYYXX’s eponymous LP was a lot more nuanced, and perhaps more critically acclaimed than Flume’s debut is, it’s the Australian’s largely more accessible sound that proves his best accolade.
Admittedly something of a guilty pleasure, Flume’s sample heavy beat-making is the kind of music that’ll do everything it can to make you smile. It’s incredibly formulaic – samples are chopped and changed in a way that James Blake and Jamie XX have been doing for years, guest vocals are manipulated into a largely SBTRKT-like aesthetic, and each track seems to have those generic static sweeps that crescendo just before a drop – but, at least on a superficial level, you can’t help but enjoy most of it.
Streten does attempt break up the monotony, but with varying success. ‘Left Alone’ is a little unorthodox in sampling a male vocal, but fellow Australian Chet Faker’s en vogue charm does wonders, and carries the track up the pecking order. ‘On Top’, in comparison, is a drab beat/rapper ensemble that features the uninspiring New York rapper T.Shirt, and is probably worth a skip. ‘More Than You Thought’ has a fairly incongruous bass swoop drop, which is a bit more aggressive than the others (sounding a bit like ‘Pariah’ by dub master Biome) but brings a welcome pseudo bro-step flutter nonetheless.
At fifteen tracks, Flume has a bit too much filler to define itself as anything other than a typical debut. A few instrumentals (‘Warm Thoughts’ & ‘Ezra’) fail to develop and drag as a consequence, and by the end of the 50 minute record, things are just beginning to get a bit tedious. In Flume’s defense though, his album isn’t the type for deep focused listening, and it’s in the nature of the genre that an album will be somewhat hit and miss. It’s certainly a promising start, and at least before he puts out something more meaningful, Flume is the perfect album to spin at a house party if you want to appear ‘cool’ and keep most people happy.
By Alex Throssell
Dance Yrself Clean
