Setting the scene: how Flume burst out of Australia to conquer the world

Born in the picturesque but culturally stymied town of Northern Beaches in the suburbs of Sydney, Streten was always drawn to electronic music. As a youngster, his mother used to play him French new age boffins Deep Forest to get him to sleep at night: “I’d only sleep once it was done because I wanted to stay up and listen to it,” he remembers – and you only have to listen to ‘Skin’s flute-laden curtain raiser to appreciate how much of a psychological footprint this left. Years later, he would make the pilgrimage to the city with his friends every weekend to party to fidgit house, but like so many digital natives his real-life clubbing experience was foreshadowed by a largely online education courtesy of Napster and Kazaa. At the canonical end there was The Prodigy and Daft Punk; then the wild cards: obscure hardcore like DJ Hixxy, and Ministry of Sound trance compilations courtesy of his neighbour’s brother. “It struck a chord with me, the euphoric nature of it,” he says, then pauses. “I used to listen to some terrible music.”

None of his school friends shared his listening habits, which led to to some childish bullying. “I used to cop a bit of shit for it when I was at high school,” he recalls. “‘Techno Beats Harley’, they used to call me.” Despite the teasing, by the age of 12 he was producing his own beats in his bedroom with the help of some production software given away in a box of cereal. It supplanted his first musical love – the saxophone – and his teachers even allowed him to create beats for music class, so long as he played sax to them. However, after nine years’ study he eventually ditched the sax classes when its limitations became too obvious: “You can only play one note at a time and that’s just boring,” he says. It sounds funny, but he’s deadly serious.

Perhaps it’s telling that the saxophone requires a band to work, whereas Streten cuts a more singular figure. Giving his first interview of his first round of press for three years, he is polite, open, but you can tell he doesn’t relish talking about himself: “I was kinda quiet,” he agrees. “I think that’s why I’m in this position. I have all these [production] skills that I might not necessarily have had if I’d been hanging out with the cool crowd.” Yet watching him rehearse, flanked by swathes of lights, drum pads, keyboards and controllers, he seems incredibly at ease. It wasn’t always like this, of course. As a teenager Streten was restless, burning through a number of names and musical styles, from the electro house of his first project HEDS and Harley School Kid to moombahcore detours and the banging house of What So Not. We know this because he was an active and long-time user of Reddit, posting tracks for feedback that are still searchable today. But it was also there that Streten would comb the sub-reddit r/futurebeats – and the blogosphere in general – for music that would help crystallise the Flume sound, with one or two particular artists proving foundational. “I remember the first track I heard by [Flying Lotus], ‘GNG BNG’. My mind exploded,” he says. But there was another piece of dynamite even more potent: the cosmic pop enigma Jai Paul. “I was like, oh my God, what is this?” he says, referring to the Brit producer who remains a mysterious, totemic figure for blog readers of a certain age. “The rhythm and flow felt so right. ‘BTSD’ is basically what I based this entire Flume project on”. After school he spurned uni to thrash out a living making music, working a series of shitty jobs while he waited. He was working as a waiter at the Hard Rock Cafe when he finally caught a break, having entered a demo version of his ‘Sleepless’ EP into a competition run by Future Classic. “I came second,” he laughs. “But I got a deal out of it.”

On a working holiday in Australia in autumn 2012, Transgressive founder Toby L stumbled on an early club appearance from a nascent yet hugely exciting Streten off the back of the label’s excitement over the Sleepless 12”: “He changed the parameters of what underground electronic music could be. In a tiny room, it was evident that he was able to showcase both a unique production style, as well as memorable, forward-thinking songwriting. I was blown away. It was a no-brainer to get involved.” Approaching Future Classic the following day, a deal for UK and Europe was agreed over several drinks – and that was that.