Tamino
Amir

Between the '70s and the early '80s, it became common to define "Bryan Ferry's tonality" as that of the baritone who "pushes" on his high register, thus creating an unnecessary tremolo effect or otherwise emotionally charged, as indeed is practically inevitable when the singer (whoever he may be: bass, baritone, or tenor) "pushes" on that register. Certainly, perhaps fortunately, not everyone achieves a vocal color like the Roxy Music vocalist, namely melodramatic and vibrato—although the emotional connotation of the effort is inevitable—and one of these cases is precisely Tamino, a Mozartian name for the young Amir Moharam Fouad, a twenty-two-year-old Egyptian-Belgian singer-songwriter. In 2016, he recorded five of his songs on guitar that pleased those who liked them and became, in 2017, with professional arrangements and serious recordings, his first beautiful eponymous EP, created in collaboration with Colin Greenwood of Radiohead. Of those five pearls, three are also included in Amir, his first LP released in October 2018, and one in particular, "Cigar," in the exact same version.
How to define Tamino's music? A Buckley father or son, it doesn't matter (since the second was essentially an imitation of the first) baritone, king of sadness and melancholy that infects even reasonably pop songs, yet they reach lyrical heights in the existential depressions of Leonard Cohen, all in a Middle Eastern sauce à la David Sylvian. Excellent English, a funambulistic voice up to a surprising virtuoso falsetto which, it must be said in passing, the author does not like and indeed considers a stylistic limitation, but nonetheless, one must recognize the craft.

The album debuts with one of the masterpieces of the first EP, "Habibi," a hypnotic yet light guitar arpeggio to open, a young yet deep voice, of infinite melancholy. The melody, needless to say, is poignant, but its sadness saves it from being cloying, even during the acrobatic yet beautiful and sweet refrain, paced by a hypnotic piano reminiscent of Placebo's "Centerfolds." Middle Eastern spices intoxicate the disappointed (and destroyed) lover, take Jeff Buckley into paranoia, and drag him in spirals of piano before a moving pause. It's just a shame about the last verse sung an octave higher in a falsetto that, however excellently performed, to ears like mine can only appear unpleasantly shrill, but fortunately, it lasts briefly.
Unfortunately, the rest of the LP is not based on similar masterpieces, and this is perhaps the only limitation of the work, I mean the only one besides what it shares with 99% of the products released after the '90s: the lack of original sound exploration and harmonic solutions (which, in my opinion, was the great merit of the '80s), compensated by an original mixture of already heard things. The album unfolds among more "normal," or pop if you prefer, songs based on a more or less regular structure of verse and chorus. What makes them intriguing are the intention and the color of our voice, as well as the arrangements by Nagham Zikrayat, an orchestra of Middle Eastern exiles based in Belgium, a spicy anthology capable of reviving the slightly overboiled porridge of classic European songwriting on which the author relies: take the opening of "So it Goes," which sounds like a Thom Yorke singing in the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul. Of this group, "Tummy," "Chambers," and others are pleasant, but it must be said that all are characterized by a great class of Sylvian-like memory.

The masterpiece reappears with "Indigo Night" (from the first EP), also characterized by a heart-wrenching guitar arpeggio, a voice that from the deep suggests cosmic melancholies on a slow almost reggae rhythm, following the thread of imagination and ancestral memories. The voice knows how to captivate and delight, it knows how to climb the sick and indolent corridors of the soul in bold scales that at times recall the "cinematic" exploration of contemporary Anna Calvi. The next "Cigar" instead slightly speeds up the rhythm, the singing becomes almost a mocking challenge (compared to the rest of the album), the structure is simple and based on a effective melody interspersed with tonal jumps and a refrain/variant almost indie, albeit on acoustic arrangement. Wonderful, even without representing anything revolutionary either in structure or in harmonic/melodic solutions.
Another standout track, not included in the first EP, is the third to last "w.o.t.h.," written just like that, probably the acronym of the line sung at the end "the will of this heart." Opening with a rapid percussion perhaps sampled, nevertheless giving a strong electronic impression that somewhat contrasts with the other arrangements. The track is evocative yet vibrant, the atmospheric and enveloping arrangement, the spices dazzle but the vitality isn't suffocated, the tonal jump redeems it. A hymn of thanks to the deity and the force of nature, accompanied by electronics immersed in the deep and murky waters of the Nile. The album closes with the last masterpiece, "Persephone," a poignant song for a metaphorically buried beloved, where Leonard Cohen takes back what is his: a depressed, simple yet touching melody, "alien" and unpredictable harmonic turnaround, nonetheless capable of piercing the heart. In the disappointment of the now lonely lover, Tamino is truly able to delve into the darkest unconscious recesses and evoke the most hidden tears, so denied by the conscious. Towards the end, an insertion yearns for the empyrean, only to plunge back into guilt.

Amir, prince, the second name of our protagonist, as a prince was the protagonist of Mozart's Magic Flute, Tamino indeed. In this sort of cultural isolation of his, where the main referents are either remote (Egypt and the entire Middle East) or dead (Buckley, Cohen), he appears as a disdainful prince who does not mingle with the vulgarity of his time. A strength, of course, yet in front of a work that sincerely moved us, the impression lingers that maturity, the real kind, the ability to probe the deepest recesses of the soul beyond the more exquisitely emotional ones, is still something to come. Better, right? We'll follow him with more curiosity!