Tom Tom Club

Tom Thum is on the phone from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where he's been doing his show, Beating The Habit, a veritable barrage of sounds, noise and proper music made using only the sounds he can create with his vocal cords. The cold weather hasn't been kind to our Brisbane boy. It's a freezing cold Edinburgh summer,” he laughs. “It's Brisbane winter times two. It's pretty depressing. I've been doing shows pretty much every night.”

He excuses himself briefly to chuck a jumper on and he's coughing really hard in the background. “It's kind of hard to explain,” he says of Beating The Habit, the same production he's bringing back home to the Brisbane Festival. “It's basically everything I find amusing squeezed into an hour. There's some stuff with a loopstation, some visual stuff, a lot of audience interactions and then stuff with just a microphone. It's a whole mishmash of all the different facets of me as an entertainer I guess.”

While travelling the world earning a bit of coin from making noises with your mouth is not something a lot of people can lay claim to, another member of that club is the famous 'funny noises from Police Academy guy', also known as Michael Winslow. Tom says it's something of an honour to get the chance to play some shows with him in Edinburgh. “Well it's in the same venue as where I'm doing my show. He's like the OG sound-maker. I've been hanging out with him backstage a bit and he's a really nice guy. I hope we get the chance to collaborate on something, which will be really cool.

“The thing is, I've never seen one of his performances. The only thing I've had to go on was Police Academy and Spaceballs videos. I have trawled the Internet and can't find a lot of stuff. I really want to pick his brain, but I don't want to be rude. I know when anyone comes up to me and is like 'How do you make that sound?' I'm always like, well first of all you need to practice for five years and try and get it [laughs].”

Tom says this often comes up at parties, and it's hard to nd a way out. “It's like a gift and a curse sometimes man. As much as I love beatboxing, I hate looking like a show-off. Also, it's my instrument. You can carry it around wherever you go, and you don't get charged excess baggage, and you don't have to plug it in or anything like that. But the other thing is you've always got it. I can't be like, 'Ah you know what man? I can't beatbox for you at your party, in front of two of your drunk mates because I left my beatbox at home, sorry bro!'”

When he's not in the guise of Tom Thum, he's also been known to drop some rhymes under yet another pseudonym Tommy Illfigga, including a track on the newest Obese Records compilation, ObeseCity 2, celebrating the tenth anniversary of the classic mix that helped put Australian hip hop on the map. He also performs as part of the Tom Tom Crew, which features DJ and acrobats.

“I've just done a new record with Jamie McDowell, one of the Acrobats from Tom Tom Crew,” he adds. “When we were on tour I started doing drums for him when he would go to open mic nights, and it turned out to be a really cool dynamic. It was a completely different foray for me into a world I know nothing about, but it was great being the backing guy.”

Tom Thum will be playing the following shows:

Tuesday 11 September - Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane QLD