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Australian producer Flume has emerged to very positive reception in the UK this year and for a very good reason. His self titled debut album showcased a number of brilliant singles including ‘Holdin On’, ‘Sleepless’ and ‘Left Alone’.
With a current mainstream music scene heavily saturated with electro producers, Flume’s assured debut set him apart from a number of electro artists. The young talent (he’s only 22) has made a firm impression with his distinctive and atmospheric reworking of R&B, soul and hip hop samples into an irresistible meld of electro dance beats.
His unique sound is constructed around carefully and ingeniously chosen old school samples that include soul classics by artists such as Otis Redding, Marlena Shaw and Anthony White, transforming them into unique and original dance sounds. He employs the velvety vocals of a number of singers, most prominently including the husky and dulcet tones of fellow Aussie Chet Faker. The overall result produces a richly textured, distorted soul sound making it an electro record that rivals the likes of Disclosure in talent and originality. Now, as he commences a support slot with Disclosure on their UK tour, his debut record is being reissued as a deluxe edition, with an impressive 4 disc set of album tracks, remixes by himself and others and a collection of mixtape tracks featuring a number of high profile artists, including the likes of Wu Tang’s Ghost Face Killa, Twin Shadow and Shlomo.
The remixes of his own tracks are incredibly good, but his own remixes of tracks such as ‘Zimbabwe’, ‘Hyperparadise’ and Disclosure’s ‘You and Me’ are particularly majestic. The stand out of the deluxe edition is the hip hop addition to the mixtapes, with new compositions such as the ‘Intro’ featuring the rapper Stalley and the reworking of album tracks such as ‘Stay Close’ with Boldy James showing off Flume’s versatility. Not only can he produce soul and R&B, he comfortably takes on hip-hop beats and sounds, reworking them as the perfect addition to his collection of dance tracks.
For any Flume fans, the Deluxe edition is well worth investing in and will provide many hours of compulsive listening.
