Underneath Manchester’s Picadilly Station, Harley Streten A.K.A Flume closed off his European tour in ridiculous style as part of the Warehouse Project season. Tight and intimate in the brick-walled space it’s a completely different environment to the vastness of London’s Alexandra Palace the night prior and likely the smallest crowd the Australian producer has played to for a long time. Intense security is inconvenient but it’s WHP’s attempt to protect what they’ve spent years building under the railway arches- and across the whole of Manchester. Held in a regulatory vice by the government’s crusade against drugs, British clubs have been forced to move in line – or become the site of a yuppie apartment block.
Flume appears an hour after midnight, wrapped in a foggy cloak of golden spotlights atop his glowing rig of cubes. With just under an hour available he no room for subtlety, setting off the thousands packed into the tunnel with the glitchy ascent of ‘Helix’. Staccato bursts of feedback and bass rolled and coalesced into the shuddering ‘Wallfuck’ and the infamous remix of Lorde’s ‘Tennis Court’ sounds huge.
Touring 2nd long-player Skin saw Flume embraced by the mainstream, a stupidly successful breakout that escaped the stale trappings of EDM drop culture. At the core its big picture electro, yet everything breaks the genre-binary, even the most by-the-numbers anthems (Tove Lo’s ‘Say It’) sound like a collision between spaceships. Ending on ‘Free’ Flume reaches critical mass, departing to a shuddering wall of sound. Lightyears beyond his competitors, Flume is a ridiculous spectacle live.