{"id":16393,"date":"2024-09-02T20:10:10","date_gmt":"2024-09-02T19:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/?p=16393"},"modified":"2024-09-12T14:45:34","modified_gmt":"2024-09-12T13:45:34","slug":"upupayama-mount-elephant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/upupayama-mount-elephant\/","title":{"rendered":"Upupay\u00e1ma \u2013 Mount Elephant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The \u2018Mount Elephant\u2019 journey flutters into being with \u2018Moon Needs The Wolf\u2019; acoustic guitar, flute and voice &nbsp;immediately transporting you to a different plane of existence; a near 8 minute glide through varied textures and sounds that, like the rest of the album, never stays in one place for too long. The gentle intro morphs into plaintive eastern faraway vibes and then shifts to an insistent bass and drum section that ups the tempo and adds more guitars before dropping back to bass and bongos and heading off into yet another direction\u2026anything goes here and you just have to drop preconceptions and go with it.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Thimpu\u2019 to me sounds like a dreamy hymn to fertility gods of old, ancient and playful, a slowly building dervish dance. And then \u2018Fil Dagi\u2019; a hypnotic fireside chat with Lucifer, seductive and mystical and somehow knowing .<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Upupay\u0101ma - Fil Da\u011f\u0131 (Official Video)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/06sk6AGsb-0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>But those are just my interpretations and I don\u2019t suppose for a second they reflect anyone else\u2019s which is the beauty of the album. Some music leads you to a certain feeling or imposes its own mood and meaning; Upupay\u00e1ma seem to give you the textures and sounds to work with and then let you get on with it.<\/p>\n<p>For that reason there seems little point describing each track; suffice to say the whole trip is &nbsp;fertile global psychedelia, rich and intoxicating with a folky, rustic and mystical feel, blending many different instruments (including flutes\u2026I do love a flute!) and employing multiple shifts and jumps in timing and pace. If that makes you think over-serious muso noodlings don&#8217;t fear; there\u2019s a mischievous and devilish lightness which sits strangely and fittingly with the rich tones and exotic sounds.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/UPUPAYAMA-MOUNT-ELEPHANT-FINAL-PACKSHOT-scaled.jpg\" rel=\"lightbox[16393]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-16397 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/UPUPAYAMA-MOUNT-ELEPHANT-FINAL-PACKSHOT-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" data-wp-pid=\"16397\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/UPUPAYAMA-MOUNT-ELEPHANT-FINAL-PACKSHOT-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/UPUPAYAMA-MOUNT-ELEPHANT-FINAL-PACKSHOT-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/UPUPAYAMA-MOUNT-ELEPHANT-FINAL-PACKSHOT-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/UPUPAYAMA-MOUNT-ELEPHANT-FINAL-PACKSHOT-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/UPUPAYAMA-MOUNT-ELEPHANT-FINAL-PACKSHOT-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/UPUPAYAMA-MOUNT-ELEPHANT-FINAL-PACKSHOT-2048x2048.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/UPUPAYAMA-MOUNT-ELEPHANT-FINAL-PACKSHOT-600x600.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/UPUPAYAMA-MOUNT-ELEPHANT-FINAL-PACKSHOT-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/UPUPAYAMA-MOUNT-ELEPHANT-FINAL-PACKSHOT-1200x1200.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There are voices (for some reason \u2018vocals\u2019 doesn\u2019t feel quite right) scattered throughout but just as with the first 2 Upupay\u00e1ma albums (the self-titled debut and \u2018The Golden Pond\u2019, both on Cardinal Fuzz records) I have no idea what is being said or what it means and I haven\u2019t really tried to work it out\u2026it is another texture and an instrument in its own right. Upupayama is Alessio Ferrari who plays and records everything himself but live has a full band that naturally comes across in a different way to the recorded work. Having witnessed them on stage at this years <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/FuzzClubRecords\">Fuzz Club<\/a> festival in Eindhoven I&#8217;m definitely looking forward to them hopefully hitting the UK at some point in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Mount Elephant\u2019 is a musical guide to a trip through your own imagination; a surreal fantasy world where the meanings are yours. One to immerse and lose yourself in\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Available soon from <a href=\"https:\/\/fuzzclub.bandcamp.com\/\">Fuzz Club records<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Gary Powell<\/p>\n<p>September 2024<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The \u2018Mount Elephant\u2019 journey flutters into being with \u2018Moon Needs The Wolf\u2019; acoustic guitar, flute and voice &nbsp;immediately transporting you to a different plane of existence; a near 8 minute glide through varied textures and sounds that, like the rest of the album, never stays in one place for too long. The gentle intro morphs &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":16396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1438,83,6,82,71,1063,74],"tags":[1579,1578,1556,1553,1546,1530,1513,1515,1432,1174,432,1066,683],"series":[],"class_list":["post-16393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bands","category-exotica","category-features","category-folk","category-music","category-psychedelic","category-reviews","tag-fuzz-club-records","tag-vintage","tag-lp-review","tag-neo-psychedelia","tag-vinyl","tag-music","tag-album-review","tag-psych","tag-fuzz","tag-folk","tag-gary-powell","tag-psychedelia","tag-psychedelic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16393"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16399,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16393\/revisions\/16399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16393"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=16393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}