Although Flume’s music falls under the EDM genre, the producer himself has said that he tries to keep a distance between his music and the world of EDM. When Aussie producer Flume, a.k.a. Harley Streten spoke backstage at Reading Festival 2014 to Digital Spy, he openly admitted his preference for playing to rock crowds over EDM crowds. He explained, “I’ve gotta say festivals like [Reading] are playing to people who I want to be playing to, who I feel are better crowds.” He continued, “I try to keep out of the EDM world, I try to keep Flume far from the EDM world.” He bluntly explained his reasoning by saying that with “commercial EDM, the crowd is f**ked up kids basically. They don’t care about the music, they want to hear one or two songs and that’s it. I prefer to play to people who actually give a s**t about the music.” Although there are people in EDM crowds who care deeply about the music they are hearing and not everyone who attends EDM shows are “f**ked up kids”, Flume does make a fair point. As an artist, it is more satisfying to perform to a crowd that is musically aware and attentive, rather than a crowd of blundering, incoherent EDM fans who are just waiting to hear a song or two…but who could blame him?
Not only does Flume wish to differentiate himself and his music from the EDM world, but he admits to not being able to find a home for his sound in any type of music festival, rock or EDM. He likened his sound to that of British duo, Disclosure, saying that “they can do rock festivals and they can do dirty EDM festivals because there’s no real festival that has that”, referring to the fact that there is no festival that exactly fits either of their sounds. Flume further added, “I feel like we’re doing our own thing and people who like rock music like Flume, people who like dirty EDM also like Flume so it’s a hybrid vibe and that’s the best place to be because you can pick and choose where you wanna play.” Although Flume’s sound doesn’t necessarily fit within the confines of one type of festival, his malleable and genre-less sound allows him the flexibility to play numerous types of festivals and still appeal to an array of music lovers.
H/T: Digital Spy
