Griff says; Burn, baby, burn! It's Mykonos Flame.

I may be junping the gun a bit here, as tonight's band seem to be in the process of gradually releasing a debut album in dribs and drabs and have, up until now, only released four songs from it. However, I decided to write about them anyway as;
Firstly, as regular readers will know, I love to write about mysterious, unknown bands who have very little presence on the internet.
Secondly, I'm proud of The Streetlamp's reputation for sniffing out a quality band and giving our readers the chance to get into their stride before other blogs are even out of the starting blocks.
And third, this band are too good to sit on any longer, I just have to tell you about them.

The band is called Mykonos Flame and what follows is absolutely all I know about them. The band members are: Kao Kazlauckas (known to his friends as Kao Johnny), Daniel Schimdt, Daniel Falcão, André Falcão, Alex Baratinha and Danilo Mouragrandson



Kao appears to be the main song-writer and frontman and is originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, although his family is of Eastern European extraction. He has since relocated to The Netherlands, and that is presumably where he picked up the rest of the band. Due to his family background and nomadic lifestyle Kao's musical heritage is rich and eclectic, as is immediately obvious from his own sound. He grew up with influences from MPB (Música Popular Brasileira), as well as from more avant-garde artists, such as respected left-wing political activist and composer Caetano Veloso (The Streetlamp salutes you!). As a teenager, Kao was influenced by the freak-folk and new weird America movements. At 26, while living in the Netherlands, he discovered the ukulele, banjo and the folk music of Eastern Europe, thus bringing his story back to its beginnings.



So, how would I describe the music of Mykonos Flame? As you should have gathered from the above, their style is characterized by a merging of international and Brazilian folk-styles and rhythms (in this, the influence of Veloso is apparent).The way they cross-pollinate their numerous influences, including MPB, pop, indie-folk, samba and the dance music of Eastern Europe is quite delightful and I genuinely believe that The Streetlamp readership will be just as smitten as I am. In fact, I sincerely believe this band could go on to have substantial crossover appeal. Think of other recent musical hybridisation successes like Beirut, DeVotchKa or Andrew Bird to get where I'm coming from. Anyway, just remember, you heard them on The Streetlamp first. Below are a couple of tracks, available as free downloads from their soundcloud page, to give you a flavour of their style. Check out their page for more tracks and more free downloads.

Jeanne D'Arc (official album version) by Mykonos Flame

Tutti (official album version) by Mykonos Flame



Griff
xx