Psychedelic globe-trotters Flamingods frontman Kama Rasool talks to Sam Ward about the band’s origins, their “euphoric” new album and how they’ll be getting stuck into ping pong and Henderson’s Relish on their return to Sheffield.
Firstly, I’ve read a lot about Flamingods and the history of the band. It’s an interesting story. Can you sum it up for us?
Most of us in the band grew up together in Bahrain, I’m actually from there and the other guys are British nationals whose parents were living there. So we were childhood friends and made music under different musical aliases, and then we started Flamingods when we moved to London. Theresa May changed the Visa laws right before I graduated so I got kicked out and lived away for three years, so the previous two records were made mostly online sending files back and forth and not writing the music together. I got a new Visa about two years ago. We were finally able to make an album together in the same room, and try to recapture that live energy we had.
How difficult was it living and working so far away from one another?
It was tricky. It’s still hard but so much easier. The communication! We were mainly chatting on Facebook, sending stuff on Dropbox and it just gets messy. It was a tricky process, but one that we had to do out of necessity. It was quite relieving to write all together. For the first time ever, really! It sounds very different.
So, go on then, how would you describe your music? It’s a very mixed bag.
It’s quite difficult, people always ask me that question and I don’t know. International psychedelia? There’s so many different genres. We are all music nerds. We love listening to music from everywhere and genres of all different sorts and so the influence coming into our records is wide.
What’s your personal influence?
There are quite a lot! It goes from East European jazz to Japanese bands like The Boredoms to Arabic Middle Eastern disco and funk. We all listen to similar things but it’s all so widely different that it adds to the flavouring of the music we are making; exploring multiple genres in one song. It makes it quite fun.
What is different about the sound of this album compared to when you started working together?
Yeah, the sound is… it’s quite an intense and euphoric record. We were on a tour for about two years and there was an aspect of the live show that wasn’t really in our record before. So on this record we really tried to capture that big live energy and intensity while recording. I think that’s a big difference. Recording and writing is so difficult – I lost my mind during the process! With live it’s the pay-off for all of that stress and hard work. We are performing it and people are enjoying it! That kind of interaction, finally getting to share everything you’ve worked for with them (the audience); that’s the pay-off for the hard work! It’s a nice relief, I think.
Firstly, I’ve read a lot about Flamingods and the history of the band. It’s an interesting story. Can you sum it up for us?
Most of us in the band grew up together in Bahrain, I’m actually from there and the other guys are British nationals whose parents were living there. So we were childhood friends and made music under different musical aliases, and then we started Flamingods when we moved to London. Theresa May changed the Visa laws right before I graduated so I got kicked out and lived away for three years, so the previous two records were made mostly online sending files back and forth and not writing the music together. I got a new Visa about two years ago. We were finally able to make an album together in the same room, and try to recapture that live energy we had.
How difficult was it living and working so far away from one another?
It was tricky. It’s still hard but so much easier. The communication! We were mainly chatting on Facebook, sending stuff on Dropbox and it just gets messy. It was a tricky process, but one that we had to do out of necessity. It was quite relieving to write all together. For the first time ever, really! It sounds very different.
