Tamino and Mitski Reside in Burrows and Ruins on Winding Duet ‘Sanctuary’
The Belgian-Egyptian musician, who opened for Mitski on her recent North American tour, will release his new album Every Dawn’s a Mountain on March 21
There’s a record on Mitski‘s fourth album Puberty 2 where she gasps out: “I wanna see the whole world.” She repeats the refrain on “My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars” like a reverse version of “There’s no place like home.” When the singer-songwriter Tamino first heard the record, he was already in between these feelings. The Belgian-Egyptian musician had moved to Amsterdam and found solace in the growing pains of Puberty 2. It feels full circle, then, that Mitski would join Tamino on his latest single “Sanctuary,” a winding duet about hope and heartbreak.
“I remain in the burrows/Of the western prairie/I awake in the sorrows/Of the new age glory/It baits me,” Tamino sings, with Mitski popping in soon after to add: “I reside in the ruins/Of the sanctuary/Where a man praised a woman/And she loved him holy/It shakes me.”
“It’s also a pinch me moment every time I hear Mitski’s voice soaring over ‘Sanctuary,’ especially when I think back to my time in Amsterdam where it soared over many days,” Tamino shared in a statement. The singer previously joined Mitski on her 2024 North American tour, having previously reached out to him on social media to present the idea of collaborating. It took a while to find the right song, but “Sanctuary” surfaced from Tamino breaking away from his usual songwriting process.
“I usually write in solitude and only let other people in much later in the process when the songs already have a form,” he said. “Collaborating with Alessandro [Buccellati] has been a revelation in the sense that for the first time I feel like songwriting as a duo results in songs that I feel are worth releasing.” It’s the only song on his forthcoming album, Every Dawn’s a Mountain, created this way and the final track to make the cut. “These things, combined with the fact that the song features a second voice on what is otherwise a very personal record, make the track a bit of an outlier,” he added. “It feels like an essential track on this album. I won’t analyze it here, but suffice it to say that I can’t imagine this record without it.”
Before “Sanctuary,” Tamino previewed the album with “Babylon.” Every Dawn’s a Mountain arrives March 21.
