Fresh-faced Australian producer Flume is fast becoming an unstoppable force! Taking his stage name from a Bon Iver track and sighting influences such as J Dilla, Justice and Moby, Harley Streten at the age of 21 has come a long way from being just another bedroom producer. Having earned his stripes fighting off both the Biebs and One Direction in the charts, he is very much a man in demand. He is currently busy touring both his debut album and supporting Flosstradamus with his partner in crime Emoh Instead under the guise ‘What So Not’. With such a jam-packed schedule we were lucky enough to grab some quality time with him whilst he was laying down some new tracks with previous collaborator Chet Faker. We get into it with him on the topics of manginas, snow, romantic dates and possibly working with Jessie Ware…
HTF: Hiya Harley, how are you doing?
HS: Hey Grace! Yeah good, I’m just hanging out! I’m on a little getaway with Nick [Chet Faker]. We’re in a friend of a friend’s holiday house behind the beach and we are basically just sitting around writing music. I think its called Hops Point or something I can’t even remember the name of the place where we are, its like 2 hours out of Melbourne, it’s cool.
HTF: So, I was having an Internet stalk of you earlier and I don’t know how often you check your YouTube comments but someone has rewritten the lyrics for your Hermitude remix, have you seen what they’ve put?
HS: [laughs] I’ve seen a lot of different ones for that.
HTF: Well my favourite was ‘nana gave me herpes’. You get sent a lot of weird stuff over the Internet. What is the weirdest thing you have been sent recently?
HS: Well I would say manginas but they are not really weird anymore because I get a lot of them. It’s a bit weird, it was at first but now it’s just like ‘its just another mangina’. I liked one recently, I got a snapchat it was like a video of a dude and he’s like ‘I did this for you bro’ and then it’s a 3-part video and he just eats a lemon whole! He just thrashes it, it’s pretty funny.
HTF: I also read that you started producing at 13 using a music production program you found in a cereal box is. Is that just an urban myth?
HS: Yeah that’s true.
HTF: What was the fateful cereal?
HS: It was Nutrigrain!
HTF: Amongst all the shows, media attention and harassment from One Direction fans, what were your favourite moments of the past year?
HS: Well the thing that I have always wanted to do was to make a comfortable living of doing this. That was always my goal and that happened probably like mid last year. Mid to late last year that kind of happened as I started playing regular shows and stuff. For me that was the biggest when I could quit my job and I was just like writing music. Mum was off my back about going to Uni and studying, it was good, it was really nice to have that.
HTF: What was your normal job before you could take this where you wanted to?
HS: I came out of school then I played video games and smoked bongs for about 6 months. Then I got a job at the local news agency down the road and I was there for a year. Then I worked at Hard Rock Café as a waiter for a few months and then things got too hectic and I had to quit.
HTF: Talking about hectic things, you’ve just got back from Europe and you were really thrown in at the deep end with your first London show being Boiler Room. What was it like having that as your debut and having it streamed all over the world?
HS: Yeah it was a little bit intimidating having a camera in your face, but at the same time I actually quite enjoyed it. Because for me like I kind of just want to concentrate on what I’m doing, but if there is a crowd in front of you, you kind of have to interact with them and that’s cool but for me I just prefer to do my thing. Whereas at Boiler Room everyone’s behind you, it’s just the camera in front so it was a nice change.
HTF: What did you get up to whilst you were on tour in Europe?
HS: We just caught fuck loads of planes, ate lots of airplane sandwiches and played in the snow a bit. We got lots of snow, that was awesome it’s a novelty for me! I haven’t really seen too much snow and we got off the plane from Australia and we went to Warsaw in Poland and it was like -10 C so it was pretty crazy.
HTF: So you’re chilling with Chet Faker at the moment making some new tracks. Are you just working on tracks with him or have you got anything else in the pipeline?
HS: This is the first time I have actually done this. This is probably one of the big highlights of the year for me. We are in this nice house like on the beach, just writing tunes and hanging out. Its insane and its already been so much fun. Today it’s the first day and we wrote this track and we are super happy with it. We’ve still got a bunch of days to go, so we are basically just going to do as much as we can and just pump out as much stuff as we possibly can and decide what we want to do with it later on down the line.
HTF: You’ve talked in other interviews about what your influences were when you started producing. Has that changed after putting out your debut album?
HS: In terms of the artists that I’m listening to, no, not hugely. I mean I’m always finding new artists and things that you’re in to but I dunno! I’m listening to a bit more Hip-Hop these days, like Captain Murphy and even some Freddie Gibbs. Right now I’ve got a lot of different stuff on my recently added playlist.
HTF: I saw that you tweeted Jessie Ware, did you just meet her at Laneway and are there any plans to make a track together?
HS: O you saw that? Yeah we hung out at Laneway and you know we are thinking about doing some stuff but you know its early days so we’ll see what happens.
HTF: What are your Valentines day plans? Are you going on a romantic date with Flosstradamus and Emoh?
HS: I’m going to be having a romantic time with Mr Faker in the holiday house on Thursday, yeah we go back on Friday so.
HTF: You have a massive female fan base and I saw on my stalk earlier that a girl wrote on your Facebook that she wanted ‘Flume in the womb’.
HS: Yeah that was fucked.
HTF: If you were going to take all your female fans out on a date, where would you take them?
HS: That’s a good question; this is going to be a big place so maybe I’ll take them to the aquarium that could be fun. I haven’t been to the aquarium in quite some time.
Flume’s self-titled debut album is available from 18th February via Transgressive Records. Check out our review of it here!
Facebook // Twitter //Soundcloud
Interviewer: Grace Picking
