DOM "Donnie" Borzestowski truly believes he has the "best seat in the house."
Perched on his kit behind his snare, tom toms and hi-hats, he regularly watches the splendour, that is Gang Of Youths live, unfold.
With his flailing mass of long black hair and rapid-fire arms, Borzestowski looks possessed by the music.
From Borzestowski's vantage point he can see the entire stage. There's Jung Kim locked into his guitar, Max Dunn fleshing out the rhythms on bass, Tom Hobden adding textures with his keyboards or violin, and lastly, frontman Dave Le'aupepe oozing charisma and orchestrating the crowd with the intensity of Bruce Springsteen or Bono.
Quite simply, Sydney's Gang Of Youths are one of Australia's most powerful live rock bands.
That's been apparent for some time to domestic audiences.
But the phenomenal success of their four-time ARIA Award-winning second album Go Farther In Lightness (2017) and this year's Angel in Realtime has turbo-charged Gang Of Youths' appeal beyond our shores.
Angel in Realtime cracked the UK top-10 albums on its release in February.
That led to Gang Of Youths performing at Manchester's Albert Hall (capacity 1800) and Glasgow's Barrowlands (1900) and even London's 5,000-capacity O2 Academy.
"It's crazy," Borzestowski says. "I feel very grateful and blessed to be in a position where I can be in a band full-time. It's been the dream for forever.
"It's pretty wild to sit up there and watch all my best mates shred. It's definitely very humbling to be a part of.
"Each of the guys, in their own right, are incredible musos. I might have thought I'd be up there one day, but the fact it's actually a reality, is pretty surreal."
Tonight Gang Of Youths begin their biggest ever Australian tour at Perth's 15,500-capacity RAC Arena.
The 10-date tour passes through some of Australia's largest indoor venues like Sydney's Qudos Bank Arena (21,000) and Melbourne's Rod Laver Arena (15,000).
But one show will be of extra significance for Borzestowski. The 31-year-old was raised in the Newcastle suburb of Kotara South. His parents Anna and Andrzej and sister Eva, still live in Newcastle.
Next Friday's show at the 6,500-capacity Newcastle Entertainment Centre - the city's biggest indoor venue - will be just the second time Borzestowski has performed with Gang Of Youths in his home town.
"I don't think it was on the original itinerary, to be fair, but we decided it was definitely another great spot to play," Borzestowski says.
"I'm obviously very stoked about that. I get to do another hometown show and to do it at the NEC is pretty wild, to be honest. I didn't think we'd get to that point in Newcastle, but here we are."
Borzestowski's first Newcastle gig with Gang Of Youths was in August 2015 at a sold-out Cambridge Hotel. Back then Gang Of Youths already had the hype machine firmly behind them following their 2014 debut album The Positions.
But for Borzestowski it was just early days. He only played on the tracks Restraint & Release and The Overpass on The Positions, after he was drafted in to replace original drummer Sam O'Donnell in 2014.
Eight years later he's a pivotal member.
"I feel like initially [when the second album was released] I was still feeling my way as part of the band," he says.
"Not because they made me feel that way, but probably because of my own lack of confidence and contribution. I was probably feeling not quite part of the furniture, but getting built into it.
"Now it feels like I'm a chair at the table and I think my confidence has grown a lot and my ability and contribution to the whole thing and the guys trust me, and vice versa, in making decisions and creating stuff."
For the first time Gang Of Youths opted to write Angel in Realtime as a band, rather than waiting for Le'aupepe to bring the songs to the studio.
"We basically rented a big warehouse [in London] around the corner from me, actually, and spent at least 12 months in there just trying stuff and creating the album from a blend of what we'd already made and recorded," he says from his home in the east London suburb of Hackney.
"It was a space where we could let it breathe a bit and add more as it wasn't entirely finished.
"Basically we were all adding bits and pieces there. I definitely felt like I was able to contribute like any other member could."
DOM Borzestowski's journey in music began in primary school at Waratah's St Philips Christian College.
At 10 Borzestowski received his first drum kit after "hounding" his parents.
"My teacher noticed at school, and she [Mum] would have noticed as well, I used to tap a lot of things and probably noticed I had rhythm at a young age, which is super helpful for drumming," he says.
Throughout high school he played in percussion groups and at church every week. Music was also a constant in his family home.
Dom is the youngest of four siblings. Older sister Eva Irwin and brother Kubush are also musical, while his second brother Szymon died in 2012 aged 23 and left behind two critically-acclaimed posthumous albums Tigersapp (2015) and Blue Coloured Mountain (2019).
In 2016 Dom, Kubush, Eva and her husband, Josh Irwin, and friends Luke O'Dea and Andrew Burgess came together to perform Szymon's music at Splendour In The Grass and at Newcastle's Lizotte's.
After finishing school Borzestowski played in a variety of Newcastle bands, most notably retro-pop outfit Goldsmith, which also included Kubush, Irwin, Burgess and Asher Morrison.
Goldsmith released the singles White Flamingo and Backbone and even played at the 2013 Groovin' The Moo festival.
Gang Of Youths manager Kurt Bailey was also looking after Goldsmith at the time. When Gang Of Youths needed a new drummer in 2014, Bailey naturally turned to Borzestowski.
"I had known Donnie since he was around 15 years old and he had always been an exceptional drummer," Bailey says.
"I was a drummer myself back then and was always so inspired by how he played. Fast forward a few years and as soon as I knew that position was open within GOY, immediately I knew he was right for the band.
"They had one rehearsal together and the rest is history."
Another person who identified Borzestowski's talent early was Newcastle's Adam Miller. The virtuoso jazz guitarist was blown away by Borzestowski after receiving a recommendation from a mutual friend.
"I booked him in for a gig out of the blue and he was pretty amazing and he got really amazing very quickly," Miller recalls this week.
"From that point on, Dom did all of my gigs in Newcastle. Slowly we started venturing out and playing around Australia."
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Borzestowski went on to play on Miller's albums Shifting Units (2014) and The Defining of Success (2018).
"Dom just had a unique feel," Miller says. "That's the thing about a drummer, how they make music actually feel.
"There was just something really natural to him. He's also incredibly creative and inventive, especially with my music. It wasn't long before he had the confidence to throw things back at me.
"The things he would create would take every song to a new level."
Borzestowski still steps behind the kit to play with Miller, but the performances have become far more occasional since Gang Of Youths made the decision in 2017 to further their career ambitions and relocate to London.
"It was one of those things, that we decided it was the point in the career to make a big step like that and try and help it grow over here," Borzestowski says.
"Because playing live is such a big thing for us as well, the world is huge and we had so many unexplored places we'd never played or been.
"So we decided London was it. Everyone was very happy with London and I was obviously very happy because my wife [Annie] is from England and her family is here, so it made a lot of sense for me and us to come here."
Initially the five members bunked down in a four-storey terrace house together in the suburb of Angel. Borzestowski had the basement room where he set up his drum kit and home studio underneath his loft bed.
"We recorded a few demos down there," he says. "The drums on The Angel of 8th Avenue are recorded there on a crappy kit under my bed."
YOU could say Borzestowski is living the dream. As we're talking over Zoom he proudly shows off his baby daughter, Poppy, who was born on June 9.
Little Poppy sleeps silently cradled in her father's arms for the whole of the interview.
Borzestowski took two months off from Gang Of Youths to support his wife Annie and to nurse his broken pinkie finger, which snapped under the weight of a tour bus door in the US.
"It couldn't have happened at a better time, really," he says. "The guys were gracious enough to give me some time off and I probably needed it to let it heal.
"So it's meant I've been able to be home and help my wife and look after babes."
But it would be wrong to say fatherhood will slow Borzestowski down. He and Gang Of Youths remain highly ambitious.
Even with their first major arena tour of Australia about to commence, they're not taking success for granted.
"We're not getting complacent and going, 'we're huge everywhere' and playing these arena shows and everything is dialled in, and we just have to rock up and play and it'll go off," he says.
"It's still very much that we're working quite hard to get through to those markets that we've never been and chipping away at the show in different ways."
Gang Of Youths play the Adelaide Entertainment Centre (August 3); Newcastle Entertainment Centre (August 5); Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney (August 6) and Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne (August 12 & 13).
