REPRESSING
Pre-Order 21st October
Releases - 25th November (Europe)
Cardinal Fuzz (UK/Europe) and Centripetal Force (North America) are pleased to announce the upcoming vinyl release of Upupayāma’s self-titled debut.
Upupayāma is the musical persona of Alessio Ferrari, an Italian multi-instrumentalist and songwriter who lives in a small mountain village above the city of Parma. Upupayāma’s music is rooted strongly in Eastern and Western folk traditions, an approach that Ferrari blends with his own modern sensibilities and style. In addition to playing guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums on the album, Ferrari himself also incorporates a number of other instruments into his sound, including sitar, erhu, transverse and wooden flutes, and a variety of percussion instruments. He is also responsible for all of the recording that went into the project. Ferrari is currently in the process of putting together a group of musicians that will help deliver his vision of Upupayāma to a live setting.
Informed by the wonders of nature that surround him high in the northern Apennine mountains, Ferrari’s songwriting possesses a mystical quality, one that reflects the fantastical and surreal, yet simple, elements of the natural world. His use of imagery is strong and is communicated vividly through his music. This is especially clear in “The Blue Magician’s Fantasy” and “Hello Green Man, I am a Tiger,” a song in which he sings with his own invented language. True to the sense of magical realism his songs evoke, Ferrari is quick to point out that even the very concept of Upupayāma, which means mountain hoopoe, “is surreal because the hoopoe is not a mountain bird.” As he puts it, “I like the fact that a mountain hoopoe and an invented language can live in an imaginative world.” That imaginative world is the five songs in front of you right now.
Comparisons to Kikagaku Moyo are understandably easy to make, but it should be noted that Alessio Ferrari is drawing from the same waters as many of his contemporaries, including his Japanese counterparts. These influences are wide and varied, ranging from the folk leanings of Fairport Convention and Popol Vuh to the rich creativity of Italian library music to the long-form jamming styles of Träd, Gräs och Stenar and the Grateful Dead.
Initially made available on digital platforms in late 2020, this edition of the album has been remastered and includes a previously unreleased track, “Hopsa-japapé.”
Includes unlimited streaming of Upupayama - S/T
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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the guesthouse to trapp musik's grand folly. fractal musics. the closer you listen the more bonkers action there is. like finding a mini civilization in yr ice box. eldudowski
Medicine is one of the most hauntingly beautiful albums I've ever had to privilege to hear. It helped me get more in touch with my own self, spirituality and nature. It certainly lives up to its name. The flutes, drumming and percussion are just wonderful. This is a great album to let play all the way through. pimblycharles
Juxtaposing lo-fi warmth with library music spaciousness, CV Vision's "In Time" teaches a lesson in transformative psych. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 14, 2021
Fantastic world music-inflected kosmische/krautrock with a heavy rhythmic backbone. This is the type of record you can put on and zone out to any time. Levrikon