Anyone who saw him on that tour would have thought he had the world in the palm of his hand as he whipped crowds from Coachella to Lollapalooza into a frenzy with his euphoric brand of dance music, borrowing from rave and electropop while putting his stamp on proceedings with deep bass, frenetic beats and dramatic crescendos. He was also touring heavily behind his second album, Skin, which debuted at number one in Australia, got to number eight on the US Billboard Charts and won the Grammy for best dance/electronic album. By his admission, “I went wild and went to all the dumb parties.” He moved to LA in 2017, living in a place in the Hollywood Hills that he turned into a recording studio and personal clubhouse. I’m like the older guy now.”įlume accepting the award for best dance/electronic album at the 2017 Grammys. It’s kind of weird inviting 20-year-old female singers over to my house. “I used to always be the youngest person in the room, but now I’m doing sessions with artists who are 10 years younger than me. Those have become ‘OK, this is insane’ moments for me, because I wasn’t doing them throughout my 20s.” “But seriously, the most insane thing for me was living in isolation on a property back here in Australia and not having deadlines or responsibilities, waking up and going surfing and hanging out with my friends. “Oh yeah, I did, didn’t I? I guess I’m jaded now.” “You did win a Grammy in 2017, you know,” I say. When I ask him about any “OK, this is insane” moments he has experienced since we last met, he thinks about it for so long that I need to prompt him. But I’m soon to discover the biggest change has been on the inside.įlume performing at Coachella last month. He looks different to the guy I met in 2016. Streten now sports a bleached blonde pageboy haircut and he’s wearing army fatigue pants, Blundstone boots, a Nike t-shirt and a corduroy jacket with faux-Grecian figures embroidered on the shoulders. It has finally decided to stop raining in Sydney and it’s a sunny, warm, blue-sky Tuesday morning in early May. Six years later, we’re walking through Sydney’s Botanic Garden.

The stories kept coming, and he finished each one with the words that went through his head every time this stuff happened – “OK, this is insane.” He told me about the day his debut album, 2012’s Flume, knocked One Direction off the top of the Australian charts and the group’s fans hurled a Twitter tornado of abuse towards him. We’d driven to the headland in his luxury Tesla and he was telling me stories about Elon Musk asking him for his opinions of the car at an LA party held by Sean Parker, the multi-billionaire co-founder of Napster and former president of Facebook. The world knew Streten better as Australian electronic artist Flume. It was 2016, and I was sitting with 24-year-old Harley Streten on a headland overlooking his local surf spot at Manly Beach.

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