Upupayama

If you want to play, the combination of elephants and psychedelia births an ancestral nightmare. Dumbo’s intoxication unleashing the dance of the pink elephants—filled with hallucinated visions and unsettling music—remains one of the great childhood horror scenes for generations. None of that is present in Alessio Ferrari’s third work as Upupayāma, except for the seemingly least suspectable aspect: childhood. “I can’t stand it when people say this is a more mature album. On the contrary, I think this record is much more childlike than the first two.”

Even more so: Ferrari's psychedelia remains lively and well above the average in the genre landscape precisely because it refuses to follow worn-out paths. Mystical interpretations are entirely absent, as is the contamination with other genres (particularly blues and hard rock-metal) that too often permeate contemporary psych bands. In his psychedelia, everything is a game, starting with the magnificent album covers he graces us with from LP to LP, meticulously translating his music into visual form and entrusting each design to a different artist (this time, the Japanese artist Natsuki Tawatari took the reins).

“Mount Elephant” represents both a thread of continuity with previous albums and a new beginning. It is a continuation because all the ingredients already tasted in the self-titled debut and in “The Golden Pond” are present, starting with a very sui generis use of glossolalia: not—as Lisa Gerrard and Elizabeth Fraser did in the past—to exalt extraordinary vocal skills, but on the contrary, to turn a technical limitation into an additional instrument that weaves itself into the overall soothing watercolor (as well as to reject another psychedelic cliché: being a vehicle for “lofty” messages). It is a new beginning because this album is the first released under the London-based Fuzz Club, a leading label for psych lovers. This seal of approval confirms Ferrari’s rise, who, four years ago, debuted by self-producing a digital-only release with a reduced tracklist on Bandcamp.

The music, as mentioned, hasn’t been revolutionized compared to previous outings, yet it hasn’t remained stagnant either: it is still acid folk inspired by German kosmische music and stoner (the latter element introduced in “The Golden Pond”), but the palette has expanded here. There are references to Turkish psychedelia (“Fil Dağı,” whose title simply translates to the album title in Turkish), traditional Bhutanese music (“Thimpu,” which playfully misspells the capital city Thimphu), and Thai disco (“Moon Needs The Wolf,” his longest track to date, “is set in a Thai disco from the 1970s with all these people breaking things—I recorded myself smashing empty wine bottles—causing a ruckus, having fun, and laughing, until the night gives way to dawn and everyone goes home”). As Ferrari himself notes, fuzz is more prominent here than in “The Golden Pond,” but it’s less dissonant and abrasive, more seamlessly incorporated into the sound. (“I find this record paradoxical because, although I use much more fuzz than in previous albums, I find it more relaxed and rhythmic.”)

Still entirely homemade, played and recorded solely by Ferrari using instruments that include the sitar, flute, erhu, and percussion like congas, bongos, and cowbells (“I used many more percussion instruments compared to the past and played them in a freer, more playful way”), with his six-member band reserved exclusively for live performances, “Mount Elephant” is a triumph. Don’t say Ferrari has matured, but this third album certainly confirms (if not consecrates) him as a diamond of the psych scene—not just in Italy, but internationally.

(This English adaptation was produced with AI-assisted translation)

12/01/2025