The Boredoms/Boadrum
Melbourne Festival
The Forum, Melbourne
Sat 9th/Sun 10th October 2010

The Boredoms wouldn't have had to play a note to impress. Eight full size drumkits ring the stage, facing inwards to a formidable grouping of a further two drumkits, a myriad of amps, and a desk heaving with electronic gadgets. Behind all this sits two stupidly giant seven-necked guitar contraptions. It's religious-iconography-meets-drum-warehouse, and as an installation alone you could look at it for hours. Which, we do.

Japan's The Boredoms have been a going concern for over two decades now. The experimental noise band, technically a three piece (at the moment) led by founder and scene-chewing frontman Yamantaka Eye, are here as guests of the Melbourne Festival to perform Boadrum. The idea: In 2007 the band performed a show in New York held on July 7, (7/7/07) at 7:07 PM consisting of 77 drummers. A year later they repeated the feat with two simultaneous concerts in LA and New York - each concert began at 8:08PM and featured 88 drummers, while in 2009 the band managed to slim the experiment down to a show in New York on 09/09/09 featuring just nine drummers. And so here we are, minutes from midnight on the 9th of October 2010. As the clock ticks over - and so ushering in the 10/10/10 - the Boredoms present us ten drummers (one of which arrives on stage via a platform carried through the crowd) to play what will be two hours of near continuous music. And supreme feats of physical endurance - from both sides of the crowd barrier.

Joining the core band are an array of local and international drumming heavyweights. On the local side there's Ben Ely from Regurgitator (yes, the bassist - turns out he's no slouch on the kit), Mat Watson from Mountains in the Sky, Evelyn Morris of Pikelet, Baseball and True Radical Miracle, and her Baseball bandmate in the always terrific Cameron Potts. International guys come in the form of  ex-Lightning Bolt Hisham Bharoocha, a black and gold clad Butchy Fuego of Pit Er Pat, Ponytail drummer Jeremy Hyman and kind-of-underground-drumming-noise-superhero Zach Hill (aka Hella); each of whom have played with the Boredoms in this role in the past, and each of whom must drink adrenaline for breakfast. Particularly Hill, who throughout the night is a frenzied powerhouse of flailing limbs. (When the man stands up at the end of the night, he is drenched; as if he's just gone for a swim in his clothes. Mad.)

Over the course of two hours, the band/ensemble move through bouts of intense tribal drumming, huge melodic motifs that involve Eye striking the guitar-neck-tree-thing with a large rod so as to create booming harmonic chords, as well as (relatively) quieter moments of cymbal work in which he conducts the drummers with a fluttering hand while coaxing noise from his desk of audio gadgets. The two Boredoms drummers flanking him - Yoshimi P-We and Yojiro Tatekawa - act as sort of drum conducters to those around them; constantly smiling and, in the case of Yoshimi, singing and adding all manner of vocal tics.

But really, it's near useless to describe the Boadrums experience. No words can describe the brutal audio punch that comes from ten drummers doing anything, let alone the complex arrangements and incredible skill of some of the worlds best playing in near perfect synchronicity. Hints of punk, dance, and electronica emerge from the sonic fog over the course of the evening, but it's the cathartic blasts of nearly tribal-post-rock (!) in later sections of the main set - the moments that have Eye smashing his guitars after yelping us into hypnoisis, the band in furious lockdown, internal organs quaking...Cameron Potts beaming cartoonishly - that lift proceedings into something otherworldly. Or, even more so, rather.

After a gruelling - but fantastic - hour and a half, the "band" finish on a thumping heavy metal tom arrangement that builds in pace (and which, fantastically, has little snippets of each consecutive drummer performing a roll on their own before the part moves quickly onto the next player - the effect being akin to live 5.1 surround sound) and they leave the stage to wild applause. Along with some exhausted looking musicians. Before long they're back without the Australian contingent to play the lowlight of the night - a chopped, stop-start affair that has the four international guest drummers uncharacteristically hesitating throughout - and then an all-in cymbal wash. It's a wobbly end to a supremely physical and emotionally draining show, one that has to be seen - and felt - to be believed. A one off event that will stand as unique testament to the communal pursuit of transcendental music making. And drums. So many drums.

(Pics: Kristy Milliken)

Nb: Un-special mention must go to the dickwad that decided a once yearly global phenomenon wasn't attention grabbing enough for the gobsmacked crowd, and, twenty minutes in, decided to hoist himself on stage, bumble across it and then fire himself into the motionless front few rows with all the grace of a handicapped pig. Seconds later, one poor girl pushed back through the crowd with blood streaming from her face as a result of our hero's fuckery. You sir, are a cunt.