Mounting the crest of the Riverstage’s natural amphitheatre last Tuesday night, one can find the source of the muffled cheers echoing out and across the surrounding Brisbane river.
While the rest of the enormous, grassy slope is quickly filling up behind them, a sizeable mosh of mostly under-18s are bustling and vocalising their zealous delight in response to the movement on the expansive, darkened stage.
Their cries reach a crescendo as the darkly-dressed, unassuming figure that is Chet Faker sits behind a keyboard. Soon the soft, warped opening keys of “Terms And Conditions” echo serenely out across the open-air venue, but the dulcet tones do little in the way of calming the crazed kids.
“Just remember I write this music to chill out to,” Faker hints subtly, from behind an impressive tawny beard. Mostly undeterred, the Melbourne-based electronica musician continues on to perform a number of songs from his critically-acclaimed debut EP, Thinking In Textures.
Three band members flesh out the live sound, with Faker’s silky vocals providing the perfect leading layer to songs such as “Solo Sunrise”, “Everything I Wanted” and “I’m Into You”.
Higher up on the hill, the more mature punters loosen up and light up to the down-tempo beats of the appropriately titled “Cigarettes And Chocolates”.
Faker hunches over his deck, bouncing and pulsing, as he commands and compiles a choir of numerous vocal samples into a soul-soothing masterpiece. Unsurprisingly, Faker closes his intensely chill set with his hypnotic cover of Blackstreet’s “No Diggity”.
Despite the soulful seduction of Faker’s set, the under-agers do not appear to have been slowed down, as chants of “We want Flume!” grow louder and more emphatic during the intermission. After the crowd is abruptly burnt with bright floodlights, and a short stint from a security guard taking the mic to encourage everyone to “look after the little girls at the front” (cue audible groans from rest of the punters), darkness returns over the arena.
A purple diamond appears on the giant LCD screen and begins to pulsate and spin like an enormous, cycloptic “eye”. The slight figure of Flume—the moniker of Harley Streten, a Sydney-based electronic producer—soon emerges out of the darkness, dressed in a simple, cream-coloured button-up. He wastes no time in setting up the blissed-out mood, launching straight into a synth-heavy, atmospheric remix of Yolanda Be Cool’s “A Baru In New York”.
To each thunderous tom beat, Flume thumps his drum machine; this also appears to be wired into the lighting, creating a striking flash with every hit. In front of his broad deck of electronic equipment sits an LED-lit 3D hexagon encompassing a seemingly endless mirror—symbolic of his aptly named national tour, the Infinity Prism.
The 21-year-old has certainly upped his production from his last national tour—a far cry from the dingy dives he was playing a mere year ago. White search lights sweep the pine trees surrounding the arena and skim the heads of the thousands-strong crowd, as Flume launches into his remix of Major Lazer’s “Get Free”.
Having become known for his explosive bass drops, Flume surely does not skimp on the bombast tonight. From his station behind the mixing tables, the young producer effortlessly commandeers the crowd, endlessly tossing out clear favourites from his debut self-titled album, such as “Sleepless”, “Holdin’ On”, “Insane” and “On Top”.
“Pretty crazy for a Tuesday night, huh?” Flume asks the crowd, with an air of uncertainty. Charisma may not be his strong point, but as they say, “where words fail, music speaks”. When it comes to Flume, music speaks in spades.
Before anyone has time to dwell in an awkward silence, Flume launches straight into a remix of “Higher”, from fellow Australian electronic artist, Ta-ku. As a live, whimsical twist, which shows a clear love for old-school hip-hop, Flume throws in an added layer of vocals in the form of Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy”, and has the crowd exercising their best air-slapping moves.
For the encore, Flume recruits Chet Faker for a vocally-stunning rendition of “Left Alone”, as well as a yet-to-be released song born from their recent collaborative efforts, which features a surplus of catchy “whoa-oh” vocals.
It all seems too soon before Flume introduces his finale with the suggestive words, “I think it’s about that time…”. The opening distorted, animal-like vocals confirm any doubts as to how this evening will end—in nothing less than a wild and sweaty jungle-like “HyperParadise”. With enough drops to stun an elephant, his remix of Hermitude’s aptly-titled track is the perfect end to the young producer’s first national arena tour
