Hi This Is Flume (Mixtape) - Flume: Review

Flume

is the moniker for Harley Streten, the Australian record producer who has been building up his name since 2013, when he dropped his self-titled debut album to universally positive reviews. In between doing remixes and production work for some popular artists like Lorde, Arcade Fire and Vince Staples he released a second studio album, 2017's Skin, which was met with less positive reviews but granted Flume his first big hit with the Kai featuring song Never Be Like You. Since then Flume has released two Skin Companion EP's full of material he made for the album that contained some well received tunes and he announced the surprise drop of Hi This Is Flume just two days before its release. 

Review By Lavender:

Flume's debut album Flume was one of my favorite records of 2012 and as far as pure dance music goes it's one of the shining examples of the genre in the 2010's. The decent but not amazing follow-up 2016's Skin slightly dulled my expectations for Flume but he quickly returned to prove his sharp song writing ability with the Skin Companion EP's that contained material even better than much of what was found on the album itself. With songs like Sleepless, Never Be Like You and Enough and features from JPEGMAFIA, SOPHIE and Kucka on this mixtape there is plenty of reasons to believe it could be great.

The mixtape opens up with a fitting dismissal of the artist Flume had become in the last few years. Hi This Is Flume is an immersive and busy intro filled with him saying the title phrase from what seems like tens of different interviews or promotional recordings, not the type of thing you'd expect to hear from an artist who makes music like you'll find on this tape. So fittingly before it starts the chorus of Flumes devolve into a technical and indistinguishable fuzz before sliding perfectly into Ecdysis. Ecdysis is a fantastic introductory tune to the tone and sound of this album as the psychedelic waves or keys and hard-hitting beat form a fittingly catchy electronica tune that hooks you straight away. 

This short phase of the record is followed by one of its absolutely best tracks in High Beams. The instrumental here is absolutely BANGING and whenever it dares to let you rest even for a moment, the fantastic feature takes over. Grime rapper Slowthai owns this song with some hilarious and hard hitting bars with just an unconventional enough flow to hang over the insane instrumental, this is probably the track to make sure you hear if you're into electronica and definitely if you're into grime. High Beams transitions into the much brighter Jewel, an infectiously dancy track that is more groove oriented. It hangs a short sparse sequence filled with scattered ambient sounds right in the middle of the track but it picks up with the groove again in the second half and hits it out of the park on its closer. 

This is the part where I'd like to take a quick pause to discuss how brilliant the flow of this record is and why it perfectly embodies the idea of a mixtape. The songs not only form a great structure overall but compliment each other so well as they transition gracefully from track to track. It fits the idea of a series of songs handpicked to work together, and even though I believe this about all records Hi This Is Flume begs to be played in full and in its intended order.

Dreamtime is a brief track that starts off my favorite series of songs on the album. It's a cool-down moment but the backing track gets louder and louder until there is a huge breakdown and a fantastic transition centered around some vocal samples that leads into the next track, Flume's remix of the fantastic SOPHIE song Is It Cold In The Water. This was a very good track from an album that I gave a 10/10 review to last year and Flume's treatment of it earns a well deserved spot on this tape. It contains a super mesmerizing breakdown of the original that helps lighten up its mood and blend it perfectly into the sound of the rest of the songs here, if there is any one song that proves to me Flume is returning to his original form, it is the excellent job he puts together on this one. 

On How To Build A Relationship Flume has engineered what is by far the best hip hop beat I've heard all year, and worked a brilliant breakdown transition into it to start the song off, giving a capable MC a palette to make a classic. So who did he summon to answer the call that this song beckons? Only one of the most capable young MCs in all of rap right now, JPEGMAFIA, who fucking kills it. It is difficult to pick out a favorite part of this song between the stumbled and hilarious bars, the incredible texture work done on the beat and the somehow amazing chemistry between the two artists in the songs closing moments, by the time Peggy says "Don't call me, unless I gave you my number" at the end of the song it has already established itself as one of the best tracks of the year so far. 

So how do you follow up a track like that? Take on something completely different like Wormhole. The song is a jittery, cold and polyrhythmic cut with an excellent final passage that sets the stage for the next tune. Voices is a classic Flume tune, it features Kucka on vocals which are chopped and screwed as expertly as always by Flume, and co-production from SOPHIE who doesn't make her presence known quite as much as I'd like. Aside from a handful of sounds any SOPHIE fan will recognize from her work the track is mostly Flume and Kucka doing what they do and doing it well. Mud is the next song that transitions from Kucka's vocals and is just a decent track in its first half it seems like more of a reprise of Voices than anything, but in its second half it gets louder and more shrill in a way that helps it stand out as its own moment on the tape. 

Upgrade is a song that stands out a lot, it is built around a rapid fire set of glistening keys but it's the moments of support surrounding it that are so magnificent. Flume comes at the track with a spectacular attention to detail that helps build this into one of the most complete songs on the entire album. 71m3 is one of the songs here that could fit very snuggly on either of Flume's first two project, it features shimmering female vocals chopped up into rapid fire syllables and a blissful and wobbly instrumental. This track is Flume working in his comfort zone in an album full of moments where he stands out. Vitality is a brief moment on the project that mostly serves as a colorful explosion of sounds, it also came as a surprise to me that SOPHIE didn't have a hand in this songs production as the industrial drums that pop up in the second half sound straight out of last years Oil Of Every Pearl's Un-Insides.

The final passage of the album was where I would hope Flume would really bring it home, and even though the concept runs tightly through it the tape chooses to slide out rather than go out with a bang. Daze 22.00 is a fantastic sparkly song that starts off as a messy distorted cut and works in some rattling drums and a fantastically mixed vocal sample. Amber has more metallic drums and a huge beat but they're placed over a much spacier background than most of the rest of the album. It's a cool moment of change and variety for the project but not one of its most memorable moments. Spring contains one of the zaniest and more colorful beat drops on the entire record and is a decent song overall, but helps the record feel like its ending just because it's supposed to end rather than having a big climactic moment.

In the end Hi This Is Flume is genuinely fantastic and is much closer to his brilliant self-titled debut than the poppy and occasionally sputtering follow-up. The song glides effortlessly through some fantastic and varied tracks that form a tight and conceptual series of brightly colored and expertly grooved moments for one of the best listening experiences I've heard all year, period. 9/10

For more electronica check out my review of James Blake's Assume Form here.