Tamino Amir 2LP

9 okt 2018

21-year-old musician Tamino’s music is of a startling, visceral, sit-up-and-listen power. Named after the hero of Mozart’s The Magic Flute,Tamino began singing early, hollering along to the music (The Beatles, Serge Gainsbourg, Tom Waits, opera, jazz) his mother played at home. He also started learning piano, and was soon immersed in the works of Bach, drawn inexorably to their precision and simplicity. Another unmissable feature of Tamino’s music is his use of Arabic vocal and tonal inflections. Tamino’s grandfather, was the famous Egyptian singer and actor Moharam Fouad. Tamino’s debut album ‘Amir’ features a handful of tracks from his debut EP ‘Habibi’ including the title track ‘Habibi’, ‘Cigar’ and ‘Indigo Night’ which features Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood on bass guitar. Although the majority of the playing heard on ‘Amir’ is Tamino himself, he is joined on the album by a collective of Arabic musicians based in Brussels, most of whom have refugee status having fled from Iraq and Syria. Tamino: “Some of the songs on ‘Amir’ are more on the romantic side, whilst others are more on the apathetic side. In my own life, I can look at the world and at life in both ways depending on my state of being. The conflict creates an imbalance. ‘Amir’ is about balance”