Flume at Metro Sept.4 concert review

For someone whose debut album single-handedly beat out One Direction for the No. 1 slot on the Australian charts in November, Aussie beatmaker Flume isn’t a flamethrower. His trippy electronic music tinged with the occasional spurt of dubstep drones is something like a black-and-white kaleidoscope: intricate, rippling gesticulations that paint a far-out picture, but grow monotonous and colorless if you look into it for too long. During his Sept. 4 performance at Metro, Flume (Harley Streten) performed a similarly dim set, exciting the audience’s energy with a deliciously peculiar pop-infused production that unfortunately relied too heavily on the melodies of music he sampled.

Streten tumbled onstage wearing a white button-up and a darling ’50s side part at the opening of his set, sheepishly smiling at the crowd. The 21-year-old DJ seemed to stay timidly disconnected from the audience throughout the night, hardly murmuring much more than a whispered, “Yo guys, what’s up?” into the mic. As piercing stage lights and animated visuals of warped pyramids, crying women or two people making out in slow motion played behind him, Flume stood center stage awkwardly hunched over the booth, spastically tinkering with knobs and periodically remembering to acknowledge the audience as if it was his mother walking into his bedroom unannounced.

As intricate as it may be, Flume’s music can be broken down to three simple recipes: a building orchestral melody that features whiny female vocals, such as “Insane” or “Bring You Down;” a drugged-up instrumental ringtone that bleeps and bloops repetitively sans vocals, as heard in “Ezra” or “More Than You Thought,” or creepy and menacing hip-hop, such as “Holdin On” or the rapper T.Shirt sample “On Top.” All songs are laminated in shimmering pop scales, although most—especially when performed live—continue on much longer than their recommended dosage.

The hip-hop-inspired version of Flume was most successful, as his airy synth chords and strange echoed vocal distortions added a fitting and intriguing oddity to the head-nodding rhymes he weaved through his songs. He seemed to believe so, too, as he seemed most immersed during his performance of “On Top” as he raised his hands as if to signal his choir to join in praise. The best track he orchestrated was a remix of the infamous Notorious B.I.G. song “Juicy,” which he underlined with menacing and distorted vampire organs. He seems to adapt well piggybacking off a rapper’s fearless innovation, but without Biggie or T.Shirt’s rhymes to lay the framework out for those tracks, Flume’s production would float unconsciously and unorganized.

What’s perhaps most puzzling about Flume is although the tracks move at a colossal pace, their glistening and high-pitched chords instead inhibit an undertone of stark sadness, which was conveyed even more so when performed live. During his performance of the cloudy track “Insane,” Flume distorted Australian singer Moon Holiday’s vocals into a pulsating building and crashing. The melodies, paired with the production of an airy pop track caused emotional reminiscence, similar to the strangely bittersweet and nostalgic feeling that comes with revisiting old childhood nursery rhymes that carry a happy tune.

During his version of the Chet Baker sample “Left Alone,” Flume kept the original crooning male sample short and chopped and screwed the track at second time, repeating the two-word phrase in a cascading arc as if to really plead to be left alone. This was one of few moments where it was apparent something was different from the album, and although the “live” additions provided a few audible kinks, it was refreshing to hear something new.

Eventually Streten played the track it seemed everyone was waiting for: the single that brought him the No. 1 title, “Sleepless feat. Jezzabell Doran,” a fluttering ditty that is so squeakishly pop that it sounds as if it belongs in the background of a junior’s department store. And so it continued: Fists were pumped, drinks were tossed, tongues were exchanged, the beats stayed the same—but we all left with a deeper emotion tinged in our guts than we might’ve expected coming to an EDM show in Wrigleyville.