Over three years since his last project the Hi This Is Flume mixtape, Streten emphasises that “good art takes time” explaining that despite it being “what the algorithm wants – I don't make enough good music to release something I'm really, truly happy with every year.” I was on the second last one, it was just a sketch thing I had and he perked up and said ‘This is the one, let’s work on this.’” “I proceeded to play him a bunch of ideas, and he just didn't really seem to be into anything,” Streten reveals “I was like, ‘Shout out if you’re into any of these ideas.’ I kept playing ideas, and he just wasn't responding. Describing Albarn “as one of his idols,” he says “ have been so influential for me, and getting in the studio with him was a big moment for me.” He also hadn’t played his much-talked-about Coachella set either, where he brought out guests like Toro Y Moi and Damon Albarn who guests on the album’s impressive title track. “There’s so much different stuff on there, from heavy bass sounds to more pop stuff and the Caroline track is epic and ethereal,” he reveals. When we speak his latest single 'Sirens' with Caroline Polachek is on the cusp of dropping, and his collaboration 'Say Nothing' with fellow Australian artist MAY-A is the only track the world had heard.

“I felt like I was in a palace, like my sanctuary is this place in Australia, and that’s why the record is called Palaces.” Piecing together ideas from drafts that had been sitting on his hard drive while also conjuring up new things, it was a time where Streten could actually finish things, “and it was because I was in my palace,” he adds. “I didn't have commitments and my life got really simple or the first time in 10 years,” Streten explains, “I've been on this bullet train going faster and faster, this gave me the space to sit back, and that's when the whole record really came together.” Stepping back into the real world to put the finishing touches on his new record, we catch up over Zoom and his morning coffee from his base in LA. He spent most of lockdown in the countryside surrounded by nothing but macadamia farms.

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