Every Dawn's a Mountain, Tamino's third studio album, was released March 21, 2025, on Virgin Music UK, through Djinn Records and Communion Records. Ten tracks. It was written mostly in a Manhattan apartment after Tamino moved to New York City, recorded in a New Orleans church, a Brussels studio, and hotel rooms while touring with Mitski, who sings with him on the album's fifth track, "Sanctuary."
Tamino Amir Tarek Moharam Fouad was born October 24, 1996, in Mortsel, a municipality on the southern border of Antwerp, Belgium. He is the grandson of Egyptian singer and film star Muharram Fouad, a musician whose career spanned Egyptian popular music from the 1950s onward. That lineage is not decorative context. It shapes the tonal register Tamino occupies on record, the sense that the voice carries weight from somewhere outside the singer's individual biography.
Every Dawn's a Mountain was produced by Tamino and his longtime collaborator PJ Maertens, with additional production by Eric Heigle, who has worked with Arcade Fire and Dawn Richard; Alessandro Buccellati, who has worked with Arlo Parks and SZA; Chris Messina, who has worked with Bon Iver and Big Red Machine; Zach Hanson, who has worked with Bon Iver and Sylvan Esso; and Jo Francken. That is a production team drawn from the quieter end of contemporary record making, which is consistent with what the album sounds like.
A Record Written in New York About Leaving Everything Else
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Tamino moved to New York City before writing Every Dawn's a Mountain, and the album reflects that relocation directly. He has described the record as a reflection on loss and change, on the feeling that everything built before and within you is about to burn down. That framing is not metaphorical in a general way. It is the specific feeling of arriving somewhere new and understanding what you left behind only once you are no longer there.
The album's oud arrangements are central to its sound. The oud, a fretless string instrument central to Arabic and Turkish classical music traditions, gives the record a tonal character that sits outside the European folk and indie songwriter traditions the album otherwise draws from. Tamino does not explain the instrument or position it as a cultural statement. He plays it because it sounds right for the music.
Ten Tracks From a Manhattan Apartment and a New Orleans Church
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The ten tracks on Every Dawn's a Mountain are: My Heroine, Babylon, Every Dawn's a Mountain, Sanpaku, Sanctuary, Raven, Willow, Elegy, Dissolve, and Amsterdam. The geographic spread of the recording locations, Manhattan, a New Orleans church, a Brussels studio, and hotel rooms while on tour, is visible in the sonic variety across the record. The New Orleans church recording gave certain tracks the natural reverb of a large religious space. The hotel room recordings gave others an intimacy that the church could not produce.
"Babylon" was released as the first single on October 15, 2024, performed in one take from the top of a building in New York City in the accompanying video. The song announces the album's register: Tamino's voice against spare arrangement, with enough space in the production for the listener to hear the room.
Mitski on Sanctuary and What the Collaboration Produced
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"Sanctuary" is the album's fifth track and features vocals from Mitski. Tamino and Mitski were on the same tour when he was writing the material that became Every Dawn's a Mountain. The collaboration is a product of physical proximity and shared work rather than a scheduled studio session arranged for promotional purposes. That difference in how a collaboration is initiated tends to produce a different kind of result.
The track is not a duet in the architectural sense, where two voices alternate or compete. It is a song that required a specific second voice and found it. Mitski's presence on the record is audible as contribution rather than feature, which is what the best guest performances sound like when they work.
Muharram Fouad and the Weight a Voice Carries Before It Opens Its Mouth
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Muharram Fouad was an Egyptian singer and film actor who worked across Egyptian popular music and cinema from the mid-20th century. His grandson grew up with that musical inheritance without necessarily choosing it. Tamino has discussed his Egyptian heritage in interviews as something he came to understand gradually, rather than something he deployed consciously from the beginning.
Every Dawn's a Mountain is the most direct expression of that synthesis. The oud arrangements, the vocal phrasing, the willingness to leave space in the production: these are decisions that reflect a musician who has spent time understanding what he sounds like and has stopped trying to sound like anything else. The record is specific in the way that only happens when the artist has given up on the general.
The North American Tour and What Playing in New York Means
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Following the March 2025 release, Tamino announced North American tour dates, playing the cities he wrote the record in or near. Performing material you wrote in a specific city, in that city, with an audience that may know the streets you walked while writing it, changes the relationship between the performance and the place.
The Brussels studio sessions and the Belgian background are present in the record's production choices. The New York context is present in its subject matter. Every Dawn's a Mountain is an album about dislocation that was made possible by the conditions of dislocation. That is a more honest position than making a record about home from within it.
Every Dawn's a Mountain is the record where Tamino stopped explaining himself and started assuming the listener would keep up. That assumption is correct.
