Two of Australia’s biggest success stories and internationally renowned music stars – Sydney producer Harley Streten and Melbourne chilltronica singer Nick Murphy – are officially releasing their new collaborative EP.
You’ll probably know them better as Flume and Chet Faker respectively, and the pair have been working on new material together since earlier this year, but after teasing that the material was close to completion, they have now unveiled the first taste of their finished results.
Rather than releasing under a new side-project name (sorry Chet Florde betters), the new release – titled the Lockjaw EP – is credited as simply ‘Flume & Chet Faker’, and will be released worldwide on 22nd November via Flume’s award-winning indie label, Future Classic.
The first taste of the new three-track collection comes in ‘Drop The Game’, a logical extension of the working relationship the pair began when they first teamed up for ‘Left Alone’, a track featured on Flume’s award-scooping 2012 self-titled debut album, leading to the two to becoming fast friends, with Chet Faker supporting Flume on his sold-out Infinity Prism tour earlier this year, while both artists repped the “Australian Sound” at the first-ever Laneway Detroit in July.
On the new team-up, ‘Drop The Game’, Chet Faker offers his distinctively soulful croon over some swaggering tech beats and processed whoops that are so characteristic of Flume’s production, which earned him the Producer Of The Year ARIA early, ahead of next month’s ceremony where Streten leads the nominations with eight nods.
The collaborative EP was first conceived when both Aussie artists toured on the Aussie Laneway Festival earlier in the year, with the two soon hitting upon a four-day getaway to Sandy Point and Narre Warren in Victoria for a writing binge.
“We went away for like a week and wrote some music and it turns out that we’re like an awesome duo,” said Flume of the beachside sessions back in September. “I mean, well, his strengths are all my weaknesses and vice versa so we kinda complement each other it’s a bit like a yin yang thing we’ve got going on.”
Meanwhile Chet Faker previously said of the recordings that ended up becoming Lockjaw: “I don’t think we really had a plan, we just locked ourselves away and wrote a bunch of tracks.”
Depending on the reception of the short-form release, Flume has previously teased that there could be scope to continue into a full-length album. “I’ve kinda just moved outta home and I’m building a studio right now,” explains the young beat-maker “and yeah, I’m keen to get him to come up to Sydney and you know we can just hang for like, you know, a few weeks, a month, whatever. Write an album, whatever, we’ll see what happens, you know?”
The Lockjaw EP also marks the first new material from Chet Faker since dropping the Kilo Kish-featuring single, ‘Melt’, in August. Flume could also make an appearance on the much-anticipated debut album from Chet Faker, as Murphy pointed out when discussing his often-scrapped full-length release back in May.
Both artists drop the collaborative EP head of hitting the summer Aussie music festival season, with Chet Faker hitting up the Falls Festival and Southbound in WA, while Flume plays January’s Big Day Out, following a slew of music award nominations for Flume, including multiple ARIA nods and the 2013 J Award.
View Flume & Chet Faker’s Lockjaw EP artwork and tracklisting below:
Lockjaw Tracklisting:
1. Drop The Game
2. This Song Is Not About A Girl
3. What About Us
