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Those head-nodding beats and hazy effects quickly became staples on chill playlists, but Flume was already lining up his next wave. The sedate vibe was the flip side of EDM’s peak-time energy, but his slippery synths and ribbon-like vocal edits showed kinship with dubstep a sound many would soon call “future bass” was born. The following year, his self-titled debut album established the outline of his nascent sound, pairing spring-loaded drum programming with dreamily chopped-up samples. A decade later, the deliriously laidback vibe of his debut single, “Sleepless”, got him signed to Australia’s Future Classic.
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In a way, it did crack a code: To see music’s inner workings laid bare came as a revelation to young Streten.
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The free gift wasn’t a secret decoder ring, but a CD with rudimentary production software. Streten got his start making music when he was 10 or 11, when his dad bought him a box of cereal.
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In the process, he helped pioneer a whole new dimension of chill. In the early 2010s, just as main-stage EDM was pushing tempos and decibels into the red, Flume-aka Harley Streten, born in 1991-went in the opposite direction, delving into hip-hop beats and airy synths. Australia is a long way from electronic music’s principal hubs, but don’t tell Flume: When he was just 20 years old, the Sydney producer leveraged his easygoing surfer attitude into single-handedly changing the course of electronic music’s evolution.
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