What began as a side-project from The Grand Astoria‘s Kamille Sharapodinov has and clearly still is expanding, as The Legendary Flower Punk has gone from exploring hippie psych textures to full-band-and-then-some progressive space rock. This Fall, the outfit will release Wabi Wu through Tonzonen Records, the follow-up to 2016’s Zen Variations, which will feature not only Sharapodinov and Michail Lopakov, who founded the project together, but a range of others including a swath of guests on keys and other arrangement elements. I haven’t heard the full thing yet — I don’t even know if it’s done — but they’ve got a live-in-studio video of the band as a four-piece playing the instrumental title-track “Wabi Wu,” and it sounds pretty awesome as far as album-teasers go.

You ever want to see what a locked-in band looks like? Just watch The Legendary Flower Punk play “Wabi Wu” in this clip. They’re not putting on a show. There’s no audience. This is just about four players in the room, facing each other, headphones on, experiencing the joy of something they’re making together. As regards the video, it’s a little unclear at first where Sharapodinov is in relation to the rest of the band, but it works out sooner or later, and indeed, it’s everybody just playing through the song. But look at their faces as they go. They’re concentrating, to be sure, but they’re also having an absolute blast. It makes the funky prog groove that much more infectious to see them so dug into it, and it’s an utter pleasure to watch someone so much enjoy what they’re doing. If you were going to be in a band, you would want to feel this way about it.

I don’t know how much “Wabi Wu” will ultimately speak for the album that bears its name when that arrives, but its sub-seven-minute uptempo push is right on and ready for digging, so do like they’re doing and enjoy it for what it is. When I hear more about the album release, I’ll post accordingly.

“Wabi Wu” was filmed at Galernaya 20 Studio in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Have fun:

The Legendary Flower Punk, “Wabi Wu” live at Galernaya 20 premiere

Filmed on 17.01.2019 at Galernaya 20 studio by Julia Melikhova.
Live version from the album “Wabi Wu”
To be out in November 2019 via Tonzonen Records (Germany).

The Legendary Flower Punk on Thee Facebooks

The Legendary Flower Punk on Bandcamp

Tonzonen Records on Thee Facebooks

Tonzonen Records on Instagram

Tonzonen Records website

Tags: Russia, Saint Petersburg, The Legendary Flower Punk, The Legendary Flower Punk Wabi Wu, Tonzonen Records, Wabi Wu

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 8th, 2019 at 4:23 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.