Flume - Skin Companion EP I

Pitchfork 66

The stakes were high for Harley Edward Streten. In 2012, the Sydney, Australia-based producer, who records as Flume, released his self-titled album as EDM was reaching peak cultural saturation. Flume’s beat-oriented sound—experimental enough for comparisons to LA’s Brainfeeder scene, pop enough to best One Direction in the charts—was so quick to catch fire that even Streten seemed shocked by his ascendency. “There was a lot of hype,” he told Complex recently. “It exploded in Australia first and then the rest of the world was coming on board and it was quite a process.”

This was only one year after his first live show, and Flume—then 21—had a legitimate hit album and the attention of music’s biggest names. Over the next 36 months he would remix Lorde, Disclosure, Sam Smith, and Arcade Fire. So, when it came time for to drop Skin, the burden was heavy to prove he was more than just the flavor of the moment. “I struggled with the pressure of having the successful record after the first record,” he said. “Second album syndrome. I’m living proof; it’s very real.”

Streten’s way of dealing with astronomical expectations, as it turned out, were equally large ambitions: if Flume was a beat maker flirting with pop, Skin was a pop record with an experimental sense of rhythm. The sixteen-track album was stacked with legacy giants and alt-pop darlings, among them: Beck, Raekwon, Vince Staples, Little Dragon, AlunaGeorge, MNDR, and Vic Mensa. Some songs, like “Tiny Cities,” were successes. (Beck recast as a future-pop Beach Boy was an unexpected win.) More often, however, the features roster seemed a cagey distraction to Flume’s more left-field impulses.

Skin Companion 1, is billed as the first EP, presumably in a series, that will feature music recorded from the same sessions that produced Skin. But while that album emerged from a sous-vide of industry hype, its companion isn’t nearly as overdone. Of the EP’s four tracks, only one, “Trust,” features a guest vocalist—the Preatures’ Isabella Manfredi—and she’s here because she makes sense for the song, not to generate buzz. (The Preatures, like Flume, are New South Wales natives.) The result is a glitchy and glossy R&B-inflected tune, somewhere between CHVRCHES and Natasha Kmeto, with all the punch of Skin standout single, “Never Be Like You.”

The remainder of the album features more airy successes, similar to the shorter cuts on Skin. “V” rattles and clatters for under three minutes, blending organic percussion, disembodied vocals, and elastic synths; the sound is surreal and meditative, like playing pick-up-sticks in a zen garden might be. The EP’s most straightforward track, “Heater,” is restrained compared to the Glastonbury-ready productions on Skin. It could work as a festival experience—there’s a mellow mid-section drop—but the compressed synths invite enthusiastic head nods, not dancing. The EP closes with “Quirk.” Etherial and unstructured, a soulful vocal sample drifts atop percussion that never quite reaches Arca-levels of avant-garde. Flume's album art, which looks like weaponized, net-art ikebana, does an accurate job of capturing a sound that is as biological as it is mechanical.

Had something like Skin Companion 1 came out before the release of Flume’s sophomore effort, fans would probably be questioning Streten’s muscle: these are subtle productions, more Gold Panda than SBTRKT. But now that we’ve seen Flume’s version of laser-focused hit making, it’s nice to him in a painterly, if insubstantial mode. After holding his breath for four years, it was time for Flume to exhale.