My editor’s going to kill me. No, really. I’m sure he thinks about it from time-to-time. And not without due cause. You see TaikoDeck isn’t, strictly speaking, theatre. It’s live music, masquerading as theatre. But, hey, I don’t program The Reginald’s season. Tim Jones does. So, Timbo, I’m bequeathing the flak. Yes, if you’re reading this review, it probably means I’m already dead. (Ed: He isn’t. But the justification better be good …)
TaikoDeck is a collaboration between Melbourne DJ and electronica producer M-Royce and the Taikoz quartet, a subset of the full ensemble, overseen by M-Royce’s brother Tom. The brothers have written a dozen pieces which fuse the age-old with the edgily new. Like most things that turn out to be great, whether it be the theory of relativity or an iPad, there was a certain amount of unplanned serendipity involved, inasmuch as the original intention to create a set of dance tracks was subverted, by dint of organic development, by a more ambitious intellectual and deeply-rooted emotional aspiration, if not a downright spiritual one, to explore the nature of consciousness.
Whether that’s been achieved is perhaps something best left to the creators to decide, but certainly something very primal (definitively so, in fact) has been uprooted.
Taiko literally means drum and drums don’t come much bigger than taiko drums. But there’s big and there’s really big. Taikoz have both and some in-between, about 20 in all, the grandaddy of ‘em all being the 250kg odaiko. As well, they sport a range of cymbals, gongs, a xylophone, triangles, bells, bamboo flutes and various other clattering objects. They also vocalise in what sounds like an authentically Japanese manner. For them, the performance looks to be a workout, for body and mind. In the seated format, you don’t need an abworker, if you can thump a taiko drum. It’s no accident taiko drummers tend to have arms like Schwarzenegger in his prime.
M-Royce is fresh in every sense. Young. And with beats you’re not likely to hear anywhere else. Put together with Taikoz, it makes for the most visceral, explosive energy. Thanks to The Reginald’s kickarse sound system, the scale of the traditional instruments and the bottom end pumped out by Max, this music is as much felt, as heard, resonating through the whole body. M-Royce draws on funky samples and the raunchiest sound bytes to make your toes tap and your head move like a camel on crack.
At the same time he has a delicate melodic sensibility to counterpoint his wicked rhythmic one. Similarly, the contrast between the strong-armed dynamics of the taikozzies and their finesse on the more delicate instruments in their arsenal is spellbinding. Sometimes irresistibly danceable, at others carefully constructed, crafted and compellingly soundscaped, it makes for a very dense and diverse hour or so of percussive profundity, spanning the muscular and the minute.
Taken at random, Big In 3s is an infectious, short, sharp, succinct hip-hop tune, with a pseudo-tribal vocal motif, a simple arrangement for taiko drums bolstering the syncopation. Just try not to sway with it. Impossible.
What’s staggering is the focus, discipline; physical and mental demands. Not only for Taikoz, where these things are most evident, but for M-Royce, who’s managing, balancing, fading, segueing, cueing a multiplicity of samples and sounds. Indeed, there’s as much pressure on him as on, say, Benjamin Northey, conducting the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra in a performance of Don Giovanni.
For we, the audience, it is, indeed, a theatrical experience: aural; visual; visceral. Seen as much as heard. Felt as much as seen. We can only but hope we hear, see and feel more of it.
The details: TaikoDeck played The Reginald at the Seymour Centre from October 26-29.
