Somewhere along the line Flume went from being a relatively unknown Australian DJ to Australia’s poster boy for electronic music. Perhaps it was in between his self-titled debut album achieving exceptional critical acclaim in 2012, and four of his tracks topping the charts in Triple J’s hottest 100s of 2012 on Australia Day of 2013. We can’t quite pinpoint when, but on that day Australia decided that Flume was the shit.
Since then he has been adopted by the label Future Classic and headlined an impressive number of Australian festivals, as well as achieving international success. He really can’t do anything wrong.
Today the young artist and producer has released a new single via Triple J, Some Minds. The track is an original work featuring the vocals of Andrew Wyatt, and is accompanied by a music video featuring Flume floating around the Sydney Opera House at night. To me it is a little too palatable.
Flume talked of wanting to write a fully-fledged song, not just a ‘track’, as well as to push his boundaries as an electronic artist. Having developed such an identifiable ‘signature sound,’ we know doubt know there was a lot of pressure for the follow-up – he can’t sound too similar, but he can’t stray too far. But perhaps, here, he’s trying to do too many things at once. The result is a somewhat dulled down version of Flume’s earlier stuff, with clearer, more comprehensible vocals. The accompanying film is beautifully shot, but again way too digestible. Featuring slow pans of the Sydney Opera House’s pleasing interior architecture, it reads more as a commercial for Vivid Festival (which saw Flume performing at the Opera House) than a music video.
The clip semi-takes off at approximately 3 minutes in when Flume starts performing ballet moves, choreographed by Australian Ballet dancer Callum Linnane, and is distorted slightly using editing techniques. Even then it is not exactly mind blowing.
All in all Flume really is a talented DJ, but you can’t ‘push boundaries’ and remain the apple of Australia’s eye at the same time. It just doesn’t work like that.