Harley Streten, known to the masses as Australian #1 electronic golden boy Flume, has enjoyed the kind of rise to fame that many have become convinced is a relic of the old music industry when albums actually sold.
Streten currently has the biggest electronic album in the US, recently debuted in the top spot in his home country, and his world tour is selling out venues left and right. It bears noting that Streten is just 24 years old.
He’s also only on his second album and Streten admits his swift rise to prominence certainly had an impact on his opinion of himself, resulting in what he’s now referred to in a Rolling Stone Australia interview as his “dickhead phase”.
“My dreams were coming true,” he says. “There was a while there when I thought I was king shit. I definitely remember having a huge ego. I was on a cool label, I had lots of fans and I had people telling me how amazing I was all the time.”
His success propelled by his wildly popular 2012 self-titled full-length debut, Streten admits he had no qualms about taking advantage of all the perks that fame and success can bestow on a young hot shot.
“There was a lot that was on offer and there was a lot that was taken advantage of. But I don’t really want to tell you about it. I was 20, 21 years old,” he said. “It was fun times… fortunately I had my manager and good friends to slap me and get me to pull my head in.”
“I was dropped in the deep end, dealing with having money for the first time, having independence for the first time, going through the dickhead phase. There were all these firsts and it was a mental time. I’m through it now.”
Now more at ease with his status as one of Australia’s biggest musical exports, Streten still had to pinch himself when he found himself in a room with billionaires Elon Musk and Sean Parker after being invited to dinner by Miike Snow’s Andrew Wyatt.
“So Elon comes in, we get talking and he asks me if I have any ideas about improvements they could make to the Tesla,” Streten told RS Australia. “It was unbelievable. And then Sean came out and we hung out and had drinks.”
