Upupayāma (the moniker of Italian multi-instrumentalist Alessio Ferrari) is today announcing his third album ‘Mount Elephant’ and sharing the lead single ‘Moon Needs The Owl Pt. 1’. Out September 13th on Fuzz Club, ‘Mount Elephant’s organic psychedelia finds inspiration in traditional Bhutanese music, Thai disco and Anatolian psych, by way of lysergic acid-folk, ‘70s kosmische and stoner-rock. Drifting and pastoral as ever, there are also more rhythmic, danceable moments here as well as the occasional heavy fuzz wig-out.
‘Moon Needs The Owl’ – the first part of which is out now – is a psychedelic world-disco groove that uplifts in its first half before slowly fading out in a sublime, winding haze. On the track, Ferrari says: “This song is set in a Thai disco in the 70s with all these people smashing things (I recorded myself smashing empty wine bottles), messing around having fun and laughing, then the night gives way to dawn and everyone walks home.”
On the newly-announced album, he adds: “Mount Elephant was born out of a need to listen. Listening to the silence while observing flowers, while moving your hands in the wind, listening to your body while you are dancing. If in my first album (‘Upupayāma’) I had travelled the length and breadth of a place, in the second (‘The Golden Pond’) I had reached one and stopped there, in this third album I set out again, crossing a border and entering a long-dreamed place that I could finally ‘see with my own eyes’.”
A six-piece band live, where things take a more ever-evolving improvisation-based approach, on the recordings Ferrari writes, plays and records everything himself – guitars, keys, flute, sitar, erhu and an arsenal of percussion all feature. The recordings were laid down over time in Ferrari’s home barn studio in a small mountain village overlooking the city of Parma, before being mixed by Chris Smith at Kluster Sounds (Kikagaku Moyo, Wax Machine).
“Musically speaking, I find it a paradoxical record because, although it uses a lot more fuzz than the previous albums, I find it a more relaxed record with more rhythm. I used a lot more percussion than before – such as congas, bongos, and cowbells – and I use them in a freer, more playful way. I can’t stand it when people say ‘it’s a more mature record etc’, I don’t find any sense in it, it seems like we are on this planet to ripen like apples or tomatoes. On the contrary, I think that Mount Elephant is a much more expansive album than the first two and I am very proud of that.”
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