#FLUME MIXTAPE VINYL SKIN#

It’s a predictable kind of chaos, and, as ever, lyrics feel largely unimportant: Lines like “Help me elevate, I just wanted to escape” and “Where’ve you been, where did you go? How can you sleep knowing you don’t know?” loosely evoke pathos without coalescing into anything genuinely resonant. Three songs-“Highest Building,” featuring French vocalist and producer Oklou “Escape,” with mainstay collaborator Kučka and “I Can’t Tell,” with British musician Laurel-all use the same clash of vaporous vocals and fragmented synths that Streten has been leveraging since the start of his career. With little penchant for bedlam, it’s an album that lacks the exact thing that makes Flume’s music exciting.Īt its worst, Palaces feels downright formulaic.

#FLUME MIXTAPE VINYL SKIN#

Although not without its inspired moments, Streten’s third record most often feels like Skin 1.5-a collection of ideas that might have been novel before Hi This Is Flume, but which now feel stale in comparison to the more interesting fare that’s come since. Palaces, the first Flume “album” in six years, confirms this unreservedly. That mixtape, and a handful of one-off collaborations with Toro Y Moi, London Grammar, Vera Blue, and Reo Cragun released around the same time, indicated that, like Charli XCX or Lil Wayne, Streten is most creatively free outside the album format. 2012’s Flume and 2016’s Skin nestled jagged instrumental gems like “Helix” and “Wall Fuck” amid more forgettable, down-the-line producer/vocalist collabs 2019’s Hi This Is Flume mixtape suggested that Streten feels most at home when working with artists like Slowthai, JPEGMAFIA, and SOPHIE, unpredictable pop tricksters able to meet him on his level. Flume albums show off this puckish streak in fits and starts.

Flume mixtape vinyl