Quite simply, Flume’s music is mesmerizing. Since the release of his self-titled album in 2012, Flume has steadily grown as one of the biggest acts in electronic music.
Being the son of a moviemaker and producer, Flume was exposed to the creative side of things, which he embraced at the tender age of 13 when he started learning various musical instruments. After honing his craft for half a decade, Flume released his first studio material on Australian label Future Classic who specialize in their unique brand of danceable electronica music.
Gold-plated sound design, supreme sampling techniques, and algorithmic acoustics with an eye on the dancefloor is how likes to drive his music and it saw him deliver his self-titled debut album in 2012 which gained enormous critical and commercial acclaim.
After going on a run of releases that were outstanding at their minimum, Flume released his second studio album called ‘Skin’ in 2016 and the album was a resounding success. The album topped the ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) charts in 2016 and the big one came when he won the Grammy award for the Best Dance/Electronic Album in 2017 for the album.
Since then, tracks like ‘Never Be Like You’, ‘The Difference’, ‘Rushing Back’, ‘Say It’ and many more have continued to dominate music charts across the globe. Flume’s original productions are equally matched by his remixes and his exceptional remixing prowess has led to monumental reworks for Lorde, Sam Smith, Arcade Fire, Hermitude and Disclosure’s tunes.
After releasing ‘Skin’, Flume delivered a behemoth 17-track mixtape featuring his signature pastel-pop and hybrid sounds, and finally after 6 years, we have a new album from Flume called ‘Palaces’. Released on Future Classic where he has released his previous two albums, is fully worth the wait because the result is spectacular.
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When you listen to Flume’s music, you realize how little you know about it after experiencing his the sheer depth and complex structures in his work; and ‘Palaces’ like his previous albums follows the same floor-shaking, euphoric and hypnotic style of music.
First track ‘Highest Building’ starts with the Flume melodies that we adore before turning itself into an experimental and ethereal number with a club velocity featuring a gorgeous blend of synth stabs, misty vocals and thumping drums. Flume wrote ‘Palaces’ with the idea of having zero fillers and ‘Say Nothing’ featuring MAY-A carries the thought perfectly with its choppy vocals backed by its baile funk beats.
‘DHLC’ quite literally mesmerizes the listener with its crunching rhythmic atmospheres and without wasting any time, Flume gets back to his vocal-led futuristic armory with ‘Escape’ featuring his mainstay collaborator Ku?ka and American phenomenon Quiet Bison.
Flume’s productions have always been about overlapping the conventionalities of dance music ‘I Can’t Tell’ takes us back to his Grammy award winning album ‘Skin’ where he delivered minimalistic yet club opportunistic bangers.
‘Get U’ takes the mechanized route while ‘Jasper’s Song’ is a poignant and slow-burning tune featuring gushing and haunting cinematics. ‘Only Fans’ is a deep, dark and introspective number with flickers of lush melodies, and ‘Hollow’ contrary to its name is bright, colorful and progressive with an infusion of a growing dramatic beat and blooming synths.
‘Love Light’ and ‘Go’ make for the last of standalone Flume productions and they don’t stop from flaunting the big room sonics that Flume loves to dish out. The Aussie producer then ends the album in immaculate fashion with ‘Sirens’ which is a blend of complex, blissful and industrial soundscapes and intricate beat patterns followed by the title track which features fidgety distortions and finely timed accelerations that we have heard in Flume’s music for about a decade. A solid 9/10 in our opinion!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries?list=OLAK5uy_lptbI-mkjqRWyegM4UMvOvLq62lhTxodQ]Buy Flume’s ‘Palaces’ – HERE
