Tom Thum - Beating the Habit

Returning to Edinburgh for his first time as a solo act, human synthesizer Tom Thum is here to conquer his addiction to beatboxing.

Thum is endearing in the extreme. He retains a boyish love for simply making silly noises and gets embarrassed by some of the audience’s near the knuckle suggestions for sounds to imitate.  Every noise you hear is generated by Thum himself, although performing in the Underbelly allows him to borrow the lung power of the big purple cow. The audience’s seats shake with his explosive plosives.

Thum is most impressive when tackling traditional beatboxing fare, imitating turntables and R’n’B with an aficionado’s attention to detail. He can produce propulsive, exciting music with nothing more than his throat. Some of the layered tracks would sound legitimately impossible for one man to produce, were he not doing it live in front of you. Yet there is not enough of this straight performance in the show.

Instead, he fills time with vocal games and imitations that are fun but never quite become uncanny. There is also an odd focus on pre-recorded video material. Again, there is a ‘mucking about’ charm to the fake documentaries and dubbed footage, but they are overly long. The audience want to see Thum’s talent in action.

It is admirable that Thum is trying to break old habits, and wean himself off the familiar. However, with an addiction as enjoyable as his, you can’t help but hope for a re-re-relapse.