Tamino

One Liner: If Jeff Buckley gave middle eastern flair to the downtempo Radiohead songs

Wikipedia Genre: Indie rock, alternative rock, classical

Home: Belgium

Poster Position: 23
Weekend One Only.  Friday.

Thoughts:  No, this is not the flute-blowing character in the opera The Magic Flute, but Mozart.  Instead, this is a singer who brings to mind the sad and slow numbers in Radiohead's catalog if they were performed by Jeff Buckley with some middle eastern flair.  And also, strangely enough, has a song named "Habibi," which is the name of a band on the poster for this year's ACL, and which caused me to tell a whole story about a friend of my wife who married into the last name Habibi.  What are the odds?  

Anyway, this dude's real name is Tamino-Amir Moharam Fouad and he is Belgian-Egyptian (a combo I had never considered until just now).  He trained at the Amsterdam Royal Conservatory before winning a new musical talent competition in Brussels.  His grandfather was apparently a famous Egyptian singer and movie star.  His first ever American shows were four shows at SXSW in 2019.  Oh wait, he actually made a single with Colin Greenwood from Radiohead!  I be hearing things!

HIs first album is 2019's Amir, which has all of his top streamers.  Oh wait, that is his only album, so of course it has all of his top streamers.  Do you enjoy me writing this like a stream of consciousness?  It is a very good album - I've let it run for a long time today and really enjoy the mellow sounds - it really does sound like downtempo Radiohead with Jeff Buckley doing some of the guest vocals.  The top song is "Indigo Night," with 27.3 million streams.

Like, for real, if I had told you that this was a Radiohead song, and you listened to just the first 30 seconds of that song, you would have bought it for sure.  Even the singing could be passed off for a mumbling Thom Yorke.  Good tune though - a little mysterious.

Oooh, a real Tiny Desk too!

And if you can't tell from his visage in that video, the dude is also a model, having appeared alongside Gisele in a campaign and in Vogue.  That first song is the "Habibi" one, so now you've gotten to hear him Buckley that tune up.

He has a new album that is slated to come out on September 22, 2022, and the lead single from it is one called "The First Disciple."  1.7 million streams so far.

Another kind of menacing track.  The dude has a great voice and I really like the way that he is weaving together classical guitar, rock sensibility, and some Arabic flair.  That track right there feels like the perfect thing to get the Disclosure remix treatment and turn it into a dance-floor banger.

Good stuff.  Much better than what I was expecting with a name like Tamino (which I expected to be R&B or techno).