Upupayāma

Three albums in and Italy’s Upupayāma has begun to build out a psychedelic landscape that’s dense enough for listeners to take up residence. The wonders of Mount Elephant were grown from the seeds sown during multi-instrumentalist Alessio Ferarri’s last album, The Golden Pond. Where that album was similarly a lysergic journey born of voracious influences, the follow-up finds him embracing wider dynamics, churning polyrhythmic pulses and fuzzed leads into dioramas laden with flute, sitar, and erhu. Mount Elephant captures a storybook quality, transporting the listener into dense jungles, peaked mountains, fragrant gardens, and glowing caves. It’s easy to let the mind wander as the record unfolds, floating on Ferrari’s phrases, lost in the images that swirl up in curls of psychedelic smoke.

Kaleidoscopic in nature, the record shifts tone and texture with the subtle slip of a wrist, soaking the speakers in an array of hues, seeming to color the room in the very same saturated aura. Like contemporaries Goat, Kikagaku Moyo, and Wax Machine, Upupayāma stitches together the overlapping threads of culture, suturing the sonics of Anatolian psych, Bhutanese folk, Thai disco, and the more pastoral contingent of ‘70s German Progressives. Mount Elephant may be Ferrari’s most potent album yet, a testament to his aural alchemy and ease with instrumentation. It finds him completely comfortable in the world he’s built, drawing the listener in to tumble headlong into the whirlpool with abandon.

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