-The Esquire 100 - Flamingods

“The quintessential sound of growing up as expat kids.”

That is how Esquire described The Flamingods when we first introduced them in 2015. Back then the four-piece, multi-instrumental band from Bahrain and London were starting to make waves.

Founded in 2010 by Kamal Rasool and Charles Prest, the group explores and experiments with an array of influences from Western psychedelia, jazz and indie to a wide-eyed obsession with music from the East.

Using a vast selection of instruments from the Middle East and Asia, the band marries this sound with Western instrumentations of synthesisers, guitars and drums to create a potent sound they like to call ‘Exotic Psychedelia’.

With the band’s members made up of guys from a ‘third culture’ background, their unique trans-global perspective has allowed them to explore different cultures and sounds that other bands can’t.