Last time Harley Streten was in Europe, he carried a backpack and crashed in tatty hostels. This time round, he stayed at some of the world’s finest hotels. “The promoters were like: ‘I’ll take you out to the nicest restaurant and show you around. Oh, it’s snowing outside, come in, we’ve got a beautiful hotel.’ It was the other end of the spectrum, so you appreciate it.”
Twenty-one-year-old Streten, better known as Flume, is the hottest thing in music right now. The Sydneysider famously started producing electro music at 13, after pulling a music production program out of a breakfast cereal box. Working out of his bedroom, he went on to craft a stunning debut EP Sleepless in 2011, which had critics comparing him to James Blake, Flying Lotus and Mercury Prize-winners The xx (for whom he opened last July on their national tour).
Last November he released a self-titled debut album that went to number one on the iTunes and ARIA charts, fighting off the mighty One Direction. (“[When I found out] the One Direction thing happened, I sat down, poured myself a Maker’s Mark on the rocks and just smiled.”) The album went platinum five months after its release, and when he announced his upcoming national tour Infinity Prism, the first dates in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide sold out within 24 hours.
“I sat down,
poured myself a Maker’s Mark on the rocks
and just smiled.”
The man at the centre of the whirlwind is softly spoken and blissfully unassuming. Wearing a plain white T-shirt and long shorts, he nominates quitting his job as a waiter at the Hard Rock Cafe as his personal highlight from the last year. Making enough money from music has been a goal since high school. “Ever since then, I was like, if I don’t have to worry about money and do this, that’s when I’m successful.”
The reality of just how successful he is dawned when he played to a heaving Mix Up stage at Splendour in the Grass last August. “That was my first proper festival, to see the actual number of people who came out. I expected one tenth of the people there, because I was on so early. So seeing that was an eye-opener for me. I realised, shit’s getting real now!”
After our chat he’s off to the US to play a five-week tour, starting with a few highly coveted slots at South by SouthWest, where he has been widely tipped as a mustsee. Then it’s back for Groovin the Moo and his own tour. He’s excited but a little nervous about the show, which will have an elaborate lighting rig and a collaboration with close friend Chet Faker. “It’s a bit daunting, but hopefully we can pull it off,” he says, looking slightly stressed. “If we can, it’ll be really awesome.”
There are still plenty of other goals: he’d like the challenge of scoring a film for example and would happily ghost-write for other artists. But after the tour, he wants to write another Flume album. And he wants to keep his focus firmly on music and not on repeating his chart-topping success. “I don’t want that to have any inf luence on anything, so trying to keep my brain pure,” he says, perhaps only somewhat sardonically.
Published in Vogue Australia June 2013
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