20 Questions With Flume: On His Vegetable Garden, The End of the World & SOPHIE’s Influence On His New Album

After a few years in quarantine spent learning to grow kale and hypothesizing about the end of the world, Australia’s leading electronic experimentalist and alt-pop crusader is back with another expressive, expansive and exotic collection of sounds.

Harley Streten, better known to the world as Flume, has never shied away from doing things his own way, and his third studio album Palaces — out Friday (May 20) via Future Classic — is a singular sonic statement that blends aggressive synth edges with lovable hooks. It’s a collaborative album, featuring familiar voices such as fellow Aussie singer Kučka, and new collaborators including Gorillaz mastermind Damon Albarn.

Flume’s first LP since 2016’s Skin, Palaces is once again paired with vibrant imagery from Streten’s friend and longtime collaborator Jonathan Zawada. Chief among the album’s visual storylines is the new motorbike rider character that Flume transformed into for his big mainstage Coachella performance earlier this year. (You may have noticed some strange company logos adorning his red biker jacket. He explains those below.)

We Zoomed with Streten — who was parked in his car with his dog Percy — to hear more about this new look, the inspiration behind his mind-bending album, the local ads he used to score as a kid and more.

1. Where are you in the world right now? 

I’m in some back alley in Brisbane City. I live in Byron, which is two hours south, but my mom is up here, and I’m in Australia for a second so I thought I’d come see her. I’m about to go in and do a session with my friend Charlie. We’ve got modular synths, the ones that look really crazy and you got to plug the stuff in. He’s one of my friends that is really into it, and we go nerd out, record some stuff and hopefully something good happens.

2. How do you feel growing up in Sydney shaped who you are as a person and artist?

I don’t think it shaped me that much. I think what shaped me and my music is the Internet; being able to access the world of music at my fingertips. As a kid, I used to just go on Napster or Kazaa or whatever, and download music. Then I’d go on blogs, and then SoundCloud happened. Where I grew up, there wasn’t really much of a scene of electronic stuff, so I got most of my influence from the Internet.

3. What did your folks do for a living when you were growing up? What do they think of your job now?

My mom was a horticulturist, so she would teach us about plants and plant life. My dad, he actually owned a production company making TV ads. My dad was particularly supportive of it. Sometimes he’d have clients who wouldn’t like the library music they were offering for some of the small ads, so he’d hand me the video like, “Can you make something for this?”

I was probably 13 or 14, and I had an interest in doing music and was always messing around on the computer, downloading torrented software, things I couldn’t afford. Lots of viruses. He’d hand me some of these ads, I would have a crack at it and see what I could do. Often, actually, it got accepted, and I was able to make a few hundred dollars — which was amazing as a 14-year-old.

4. Do you remember any of those ads that ran?

There was a hair lice commercial, a retirement village commercial. There was a car wash one, some waxing brand. It was a beautiful car. Beautiful woman on the car talking about waxing products. How can you get more inspiring than that?

5. I love to hear that your mum is a horticulturalist. Did she help you pick out the plants that you killed on stage during your last tour?

She was always supportive. I live out in the countryside now, and we’re surrounded by a lot of natural beauty. It just works itself into the art. I live in a subtropical area, and there’s just loads of migrating birds. Also, Jonathan Zawada, the visual artist, he lives down the road from me now, so we get to hang out a lot, and things happen.

6. What is the last song you listened to?

Something random called Vox Populi! “Golpari June.” It was on my release radar, shout out to Spotify. I did just listen to the Toro Y Moi new record Mahal, which is really cool, on the drive up here.

7. If you had to recommend one album for someone looking to get into electronic music or dance music, what would you give them? [Dog enters frame.] Wait, is that your dog?

Yeah, I got Percy chillin.

8. What does Percy like?

He likes food, number one, as you’d expect. What does he like? He likes to be around me a lot. He’s got real separation anxiety.

(Okay, so do you have an album recommendation?)

Maybe an ODESZA record? Something chill. A Moment Apart, ODESZA.

9. How did you spend your time during the pandemic?

Definitely working on the album. Also just doing f–k all. I’ve been touring for so long. Ever since I was 19 years old, I’ve been on the road. I never really lived a normal life up until Covid. Covid was the first time I had the opportunity to just have nothing to do; no deadlines, no tour approaching. It’s been really fun, amazing experiences, but after doing it for 10 years and never slowing down, it’s important as a human to have some space and time; just be in the one place for more than a month. It can be quite difficult to make strong connections with people and maintain friendships when you’re so scattered around the world. It gave me the opportunity to set some roots, hang out with Percy and my family, and do all that wholesome stuff.

10. Is that something you’re going to make the space and the time for now?

At the start [of my career], I was like, “I can make money from this. I have an opportunity, and this might disappear in a month or two. Who knows how long this is gonna last? Let’s go for it 100 percent.” Now I’ve got like three albums, a mixtape. I got full four full bodies of work, and I feel a little bit more chill. I’m going to do more month-on, month-off touring rather than doing like three months away. I’ve also got the dog now, so.

11. What’s a business decision that you’re really proud of?

I was lucky enough to start with an indie label and not a major label, which I think was a great business decision that I made unknowingly, just out of luck. What kind of a business do you think I would be working on?

I don’t know. Could be some plant s—, some low-key advertising.

I did start gardening. I’ve got a vegetable garden. I’ve got the kale going, the tomatoes, sweet potato, all the herbs. I would go into the studio, make some music, then I’d step outside for a second, grab a piece of kale or two, snack on that, go back in.

12. How was your Coachella set? It was very relatable that during your weekend one set were just like, “Oops, I f–ked up. Let me just start over,” during the first song.

Hey, you got to own it. Weekend One was pretty chaotic, but it seemed to go pretty well. Weekend Two was where it was really nice. Weekend One is so stressful. Basically you just got this new show together and everything’s new. It’s a lot of moving parts. It’s not a well-oiled machine, let’s put it that way.

13. I love that you brought all the collaborators to come and perform their vocals personally. How was that for you?

It’s so good. It brings so much energy, and I wish I could have them all at every show, but that is not possible. God, that’d be amazing. It was quite good camaraderie. It’s a really big stage. Coachella main stage is f–king enormous. It’s cool to be able to share that with friends. We had a serious crew.

14. Whose idea was it to create those digital overlays during the stream?

I think YouTube wanted to do it. Jonathan gave them files and worked with them, and it was pretty wild looking. I’d never seen that before. We’ve got all this 3D stuff that Jonathan’s created, it just made sense to use it. I don’t think anyone else did it actually at Coachella. A lot of people tried to do it, but it just didn’t work or something. Hopefully we can do more things like that.

15. How did living next to Jonathan influence Palaces?

Well, we’re just friends, and we would hang out a bunch, chatting about life and whatever. We noticed our conversations go towards environmental stuff, and how we should all just kill ourselves to save the dolphins. We’re really the problem here.

The topic kept coming up like, “Oh, I wonder what it would be like if nature owned a company and invested in things? What would nature invest in? Probably things that are detrimental to human existence, but also make money.” So we made this [motorbike] rider figure and he’s sponsored by Vasectamax, which is a vesectomy brand; or this huge arms dealer promoting war, or Greenpeace, or a company that provides euthanasia. Maybe a smoking a brand. We have a Marlboro rip-off on the arm. They’re all rip-offs of brands that do exist. Like, Purdue. There’s a Purdon’t. That was the angle we took for that rider. That’s how that came about.

16. Are these themes represented throughout the album?

Not really. I just made a bunch of ideas, things that sounded good and made me happy. It’s not like I made it all in three months in Iceland. I made it over a few years in different places around the world, with different people as well. It didn’t feel like it had a particularly strong consistent theme, apart from the DNA of the production. That’s why we wanted to go in on the visual side and give it a really strong narrative. It felt like that would tie things together better.

17. To me, this album feels incredibly SOPHIE-inspired. The two of you were pretty close collaborators. Do you feel SOPHIE’s influence when you’re in the studio?

SOHPIE was one of my biggest inspirations, and we did a lot of work together. Some of the sounds you’re probably thinking of are actually sounds that SOPHIE showed me how to make. We would do sessions, and SOPHIE would bring this little box, it’s called a monomachine synth, and just make the most insane sounds. I’d be like, “How do you even do that? How is that possible?” And then SOPHIE would come over and be like, “Look, it’s so easy,” and just go on one of my softwares synths on my laptop and just recreate these sounds. So, yeah, one of my biggest inspirations of all time. I guess it definitely is very SOPHIE inspired.

18. You’ve found a lot of success while making quite experimental music. You’ve never dumbed down your sound or tried to smooth out the weird edges. Do you ever sit there and wonder “Who is going to like this?”

It’s funny, because I make it for myself. I just make things that I want to listen to, but when I do go to put it out, I sometimes have those thoughts like, “Oh f–k, will anyone like this? I hope it streams. Who is going to put this on their Spotify playlist on a Sunday afternoon? I probably wouldn’t.” I think there’s a spectrum of stuff as well. It’s not all necessarily crazy. The mixtape was all mental, but I love pop music and experimental stuff. I try and have a broad spectrum, but I just make whatever I think sounds cool. It’s worked so far.

19. Did you get to work with Damon Albarn in the studio?

We got to work in the studio in Vegas. We both did a festival together. We went to some random studio in some car park in some weird part of Vegas. We walked in, and there’s loads of gold records from bands from 30 or 40 years ago; weird rock stuff. It smelled like weed and kind of dank in there, no windows kind of vibe.

I just started playing him some ideas. He didn’t like anything that I played him, and I was like, “F–k, this sucks. He’s my idol, and he doesn’t like anything.” Then I got to the second-to-last idea, and he was finally like, “All right, yeah, this is cool.” So I was very relieved, because I thought that was going to be my Damon Albarn interaction; he was going to leave and there’d be nothing. It would have been sad.

20. Who was your greatest mentor, and what was the best advice they gave you?

It was really nice spending time with Damon, even just at Coachella, having some good chats. I was like, “Surely you’ve done Coachella before, right?” He’s like, “Yup. I’ve done it twice. Headlined with two different acts.” Like, “All right, awesome.”

We were talking about the pressures, getting in your head about that stuff you were touching on earlier, about whether things will translate or work. Are people going to play them, basically. He said, “If the music is good, it will travel,” and that stuck with me. Maybe some things will travel quickly at the start and some things will grow over time. I think that’s a nice sentiment to work with. If the music is good, it’ll work. That was a nice one.