Tamino- Cigar

I stumbled across Tamino when I was looking through the line up for The Great Escape in Brighton in May. In my opinion it is one of the best festivals as it showcases music from all around the world, allows one to discover so many up and coming artists all while wandering through beautiful Brighton for 3 days. There are worse things. Anyway, I was looking through the first fifty names announced and clicked on his photo which lead me to a brief blurb and a song.

Tamino-Amir Moharam Fouad is a Belgian/Egyptian singer from Antwerp, who released his first EP "Tamino-EP" last year. I think the whole EP is great but I'm still caught up on the first song of his I heard- Cigar. When listening I hear distinct Jeff Buckley influences and the sound of his warm baritone voice had me hooked from the second he started singing.

He is a truly talented lyricist and it is hard to pick my favourite lines in the song as everything he sings is powerful and resonates, for example:

"And why, do I still care?

About all who might recall me

For everything dies, so does memory"

The almost orchestral sound of the horns in the chorus helps to build the tension before cutting away in the third verse, having a huge impact on the emotions in the song. The momentum of the song builds and builds until, again, it cuts out to just guitar and vocals for the outro. Now with such minimal instrumentation,there is a huge sense of space for one's own thoughts. As Tamino sings his final lyrics,

"You, look at me now

With a burning cigar hanging out your mouth

And it seems all a lie, what they've told me so far," I'm left feeling exposed in my own mind.

When writing this review and trying to think of how to describe the songs the word powerful kept coming into my head. I've kept it's inclusion in my writing to a minimum but I think it is an apt word to use because that's exactly what this song is. It is raw, you know exactly how he felt writing it and exactly what he is talking about. That's powerful.

Check it out here:

Image source: (https://www.doornroosje.nl/event/tamino/)