Upupayāma releases its sophomore LP, The Golden Pond, on Nov. 4 through Cardinal Fuzz and Centripetal Force. The band — and it’s a full enough sound to be regarded as one, despite the singularity of personnel — is a freak-fuzz-folk project of Parma, Italy’s Alessio Ferrari, and from the opener/longest track (immediate points) “Cuckoos From the House of Golden Tin” moving from nature sounds and sparse guitar into an all-out fuzzblast, and then back again, to the sun-coated Dead Meadow-but-even-mellower pastoralia of “Come Here, Noriko,” to the experimentalism of “Ergobando” or the time-for-an-acid-drench of the penultimate “Sata Me Pani” (premiering below), the procession of tracks is never predictable but united through immersive qualities. That is to say, where Ferrari leads, it’s a whole lot of fun to follow.
This is supposed to be a simple preorder announcement — and, yes, preorder links are below — but as you consider “Sata Me Pani” on the player that follows with all the PR wire info underneath, consider as well the acoustic-Zeppelin turn of “Entering the Time of Wilderness,” which soon twists itself around a gleefully 1968 psych rock guitar lead, shifting into “Más” and its cumbia-informed boogie. In some ways, the songs feel manifested from their own vibe — of course “At the Fairie Bower” has a flute, and so on — but even if Ferrari didn’t know quite where a given piece might end up when he started out putting it together, the end result is not unconsidered or haphazard in any way. If anything, the fact that he’s on his own here speaks to the depth of thought put into each arrangement, from the lullaby guitar and subtle drums before the Westernized raga in “El Sueño de la Curandera” to the lysergic folk dance of “Ballad of the Mugho” at the finish.
Take some time to dig into “Sata Me Pani” but understand that it’s not the sum total of everything The Golden Pond has to offer. Upupayāma touches on various folk traditions and unites them largely around its psychedelic center, making sure that wherever in the world the songs might travel, they’re duly otherworldly for the going. If you can get your head in it, it’s not a journey you’ll regret taking.
The 2021 self-titled debut is also being re-pressed (that’s streaming at the bottom of the post), as noted below, but before you get there and click off and about your busy day, take a listen to “Sata Me Pani” and see where you end up. If you have a second to leave a comment, I’d especially love to know where this one takes you. Thanks, in any case.
What has already been a busy second half of 2022 for both Centripetal Force and Cardinal Fuzz reaches a crescendo on November 4th with the much anticipated release of Upupayāma’s second album, The Golden Pond, as well as the vinyl reissue of the band’s debut 2020 release. Upupayāma dropped the album’s first single “Más” back in August, a fiercely driven piece of modern day kosmische worthy of all the Can comparisons it received.
The second single from The Golden Pond is “Sata me Pani.” The song takes a decisively different direction and highlights Upupayāma’s more heady and introspective tendencies, while also showcasing some serious raga-like influences and well-restrained fuzz-laden breakouts.
For those unfamiliar, 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, not to mention his tendency to incorporate invented language into his lyrics and singing.
Preorders for the vinyl editions of The Golden Pond, as well as Upupayāma’s out-of-print debut, are going up for sale this Friday, October 21st via Centripetal Force and Cardinal Fuzz.
Posted in Reviews on April 11th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
When we’re keying down after an invariably long day at my house and it’s getting close to The Pecan’s bedtime, we often watch a “bonus-extra” video. Sometimes it’s “Yellow Submarine,” sometimes a Peep and the Big Wide World on YouTube, whatever. Point is, think of today like a bonus-extra for the Quarterly Review after last week. Sometimes we do an extra-bonus-extra too. That will not be happening here.
So, we wrap up today with this bonus-extra batch of 10 records, and yes, as always, I took it easy on myself in backloading the last day of the QR with stuff I knew I’d dig. It’s called self-care, people. I practice it in my own way, usually incorrectly. Nonetheless, here’s 10 more records and thanks for tuning in to the Quarterly Review if you did. Next one is probably early July.
Quarterly Review #51-60:
Crowbar, Zero and Below
Six years after The Serpent Only Lies (review here), New Orleans sludge metal progenitors Crowbar deliver Zero and Below, a dutiful 10-song and 42-minute collection that emphasizes the strength of the current lineup of the band. It should go without saying that more than 30 years on from Crowbar‘s founding, guitarist/vocalist Kirk Windstein knows exactly what he wants the band to be and how to manifest that in the studio and live, and he does that here. The real question is whether “The Fear that Binds You” or maybe even the later “Bleeding From Every Hole” will make it into the touring set, but those are just two of the candidates on a record that feels like it was expressly written for Crowbar fans with a suitably masterful hand, which of course it was. There’s only one Crowbar. Treasure them while you can. And hell’s bells, go see them on stage if you never have. Buy a shirt.
Joined by a litany of musicians and friends he at one point or another called bandmates in Blackfinger and Trouble, as well as Victor Griffin of Pentagram, Place of Skulls, etc., for a lead guitar spot, Eric Wagner‘s solo album, In the Lonely Light of Mourning, takes on an all-the-more-sorrowful context with Wagner‘s untimely death last year. And in many ways, the underlying message of In the Lonely Light of Mourning is the same message that Wagner‘s participation in The Skull for the better part of the last decade reinforced: he still had more to offer. He still had that voice, he still knew who he was as a singer and a songwriter. He still loved The Beatles and Black Sabbath and he was still one of the best frontmen after to do the job for a doom band. I don’t know what kind of archive exists of recordings he may have done before his death, but if In the Lonely Light of Mourning is the last release to bear his name, could there be a better note to close on than “Wish You Well” here?
Recorded and seemingly layered together over a period of years between 2016 and 2020, Ode and Elegy‘s self-titled debut features only its 55-minute eponymous/title-track, and that’s more album conceptually and personnel-wise than most albums are anyway. There are guitar, bass, drums and vocals, and those recordings began in 2016 (vocals were done in 2018), but also a string quartet (recorded in Minneapolis, 2017), a brass section and full choir (recorded in Sofia, Bulgaria, 2020), flute (recorded in London, 2020) and harp (recorded in Manchester, UK, 2020). What the Parma, NY-based outfit make of all this is an organic, neoclassical and folk-informed complexity worthy of headphones for its texture and encompassing in both its heaviest and its most sweeping sections. There’s a vision at work across this span, and from the Behemoth-esque grandiosity of the horns about 33 minutes in to the final payoff and bookending subdued melody, the execution is no less impressive than the scope behind it. The years of effort in making it were not wasted. But how on earth do you write a follow-up for a debut like this?
The thing about the jazzy break in the middle of second cut “A Fist for Crows” (as opposed to a feast?) is that it’s not at all out of place with the lumbering-but-moving heavy noise-rock-toned riffing or the big melodies that surround on Burn the Sun‘s first LP, Le Roi Soleil. After the relatively straightforward opener “Wolves Among Us,” it’s the beginning of the Athenian rockers showcasing their multi-tiered ambitions. “Fool’s Gold” is a short melodic heavy punk rocker, and those elements pop up again throughout, but “Severance” oozes into Deftones-y melody on vocals early and drifts out in psychedelia for much of its second half build, and there’s post-metal to be found in 12-minute closer “Torch the Skies,” but with ambient interludes in “Crawling Flame” and “The Calm Before,” even that’s not accounting for the whole breadth of the nine included pieces. Much to the band’s credit, they pull off their abrupt turns like that in “A Fist for Crows” and the later highlight “Tidal Waves,” while also keeping more charging aggression in their back pocket for the penultimate “Siren’s Call.” Some sorting out to do, but there’s a strong sense of identity in the songwriting.
A two-songer being offered up as a 7″ sacrifice presumably to the antigods of riffy lysergic doom, while, yes, also heralding the Leeds trio’s forthcoming second LP, Cosmology, Amon Acid‘s Demon Rider may be a bite-size slab, but it’s a slab nonetheless of tripped out doom, drawing on Cathedral in the title-track and bringing some of Orange Goblin’s burl to the still-spacious and freaked “Incredible Melting Man” in a whopping 3:43, as the founding UK-via-Greece duo of Sarantis Charvas (guitar, synth, vocals) and Briony Charvas (bass, synth) — as well as singly-named drummer Smith — follow-up their 2020 debut, Paradigm Shift, with a fuller and more realized shove. The synth does more work in their sound than it first seems, and together with the echoing vocals, it brings “Demon Rider” to a darkly psychedelic place. If that’s where Cosmology is headed as well, I guess it’s time to get on your possessed motorcycle and ride it into interstellar oblivion. You knew this day would come. Come on now. Off you go.
Those ever-reliable climbers of Weird Mountain at Forbidden Place Records snagged Mucho Mungo‘s gem of a 2020 debut EP, and with an extra track added, made a first full-length from Moth Bath that shimmers like a reinvented moment where classic prog and garage rock met. For a record that opens with a song called “Bear Attack,” the Madrid three-piece of guitarist/vocalist/keyboardist Marco González, bassist/vocalist Adrien Elbaz and drummer/vocalist/keyboardist Santiago Aguilera take a wholly unaggressive approach, digging into psychedelia only so much as it suits their movement-based purpose. That is to say, “Sandworm I” boogies down, and even though “Sandworm II” is comparatively mellow, there’s a space rock shuffle happening beneath those echoing space-out vocals. “Pocket Rocket” devolves in its sub-four-minute stretch but features some choice drumming and Galaga-esque keyboard sounds for atmosphere, while “Blue Nectar” captures a brighter jamminess and “The Moth” signals more cosmic intentions for what’s to come. Sign me up. Familiar sounds that don’t quite sound like anything else.
Bringing Swiss duo Sum of R into the realm of Finland’s weirdo-brilliant Waste of Space — Dark Buddha Rising, Atomikylä, Dust Mountain, a handful of other associated acts — by having founder Reto Mäder add vocalist Marko Neuman and drummer Jukka Rämänen from Dark Buddha Rising was not going to make Lahbryce any less devastating. And sure enough, “Sink as I” unfolds with a genuine sense of immersion-toward-drowning that the vague ambience of “Crown of Diseased” and the no-less-airy-for-being-crushing “Borderline” immediately expand. For its eight songs and 54 minutes, what was a tailor-made Roadburn lineup push deeper. Deeper than Sum of R‘s 2017 debut, Orga (review here), and deeper than many consciousnesses will want to go. The instrumental “The Problem” is actually less challenging, but “Hymn for the Formless” makes short work of the tropes of European post-metal while “Shimmering Sand” and the noise-laden “144th” once more spread out in terms of ambience, and closer “Lust” finally swallows us all and we die. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer species, and what a way to go.
Albatross Overdrive‘s third full-length, Eye See Red, opens with a hearty invitation to “Get Fucked,” and that is but the first of a slew of catchy, hard-edged, punk-informed heavy rock kissoffs. “Eye See Red” is duly frustrated as well, but as “Coming Down” suitably mellows out and “Been to Space” redirects the energy behind the earlier cuts’ delivery, there’s a feeling of the palette broadening on the part of the California-based five-piece, leading to the centerpiece “Bring Love,” the chorus of which sounds aspirational in light of the leadoff, and “Sagittarius” and “Fuente del Fuego” skirt the line between classic punk and biker rock, Albatross Overdrive continue the gritty and brash style of 2019’s Ascendant (review here) but find new reaches to explore. To wit, the nine-minute closer “Shattered” here reaches farther into melody and instrumental dynamic, bringing the different sides together in a way that’s genuinely new for the band while still having their core of songcraft underneath. They’ve well established themselves as a nothin’-too-fancy heavy rock act, but that doesn’t seem to be an aversion to forward progression either. Best of both worlds, then.
To a certain extent, what you see is what you get with Guided Meditation Doomjazz. The Austin-based outfit led by six-string bassist J. Blaise Gans aka Blaise the Seeker conjure a half-hour session, recorded mostly if not entirely live, with a direct intention toward high-order chill and musical adventuring. Across “Warm Me Up,” “Summer,” “Let Me,” “Down” and “It’s Winter Again,” the band — working as the trio of Gans, Greg Perlman and drummer Mathew Doeckel — are fully switched-on and exploratory, and the pieces carved from their jams are hypnotic and engaging. A check-in from a prolific outfit, but with the backing of The Swamp Records, Summer Let Me Down comes across as something of a moment’s realization, placing the listener in the room — all the more with the photography included in the download — with the band as the music happens. Immersion, trance, digging in, vibing, all that stuff applies, but it’s the hiccups and the letting-them-go that feel even more instructive. If you can remember to breathe, it’s just crazy enough to work. Made to be heard more than once, and serves that well.
Everybody’s favorite drone freaks Darsombra — who just might play your house if you pay them, feed them, allow them enough electricity and/or maybe sex them up a little — released the 7:50 single “Fill Up the Glass” on the last Bandcamp Friday as a 24-hours-only offering that was there and gone before I could even grab the cover art to go with it. Rife with spacey, spicy sounds, their interweaving of synth and guitar sounds improvised if it isn’t, rumbling and oozing at the start and drifting joyously into the cosmos over its stretch. No clue whether the song will show up on their next album — as ever, Darsombra are on to the next thing, which is a tour that begins at Grim Reefer Fest in Baltimore and some kind of special offering, presumably a video, for April 20 — but like all their work, “Fill Up the Glass” is evocative and a revelry in creative spirit, and if seeing this gets you on board with checking out any of their more recent work, then I’ll consider it a win regardless of this song’s availability over the longer term. But it is a cool track.
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 21st, 2016 by JJ Koczan
Based for the first time in Parma, Italy — the two prior editions had been held in Rome — Heavy Psych Sounds Fest Vol. III has announced a massive round of bands newly joined the proceedings, set for Oct. 28 and 29. The names have trickled out over the last couple weeks, but it seems a roundup is in order, considerable as the names are. In addition to The Atomic Bitchwax, who’ll be on the road with Pentagram at the time, and Fatso Jetson, whose slot was previously announced as part of their Heavy Psych Sounds-sponsored Italian tour, the likes of Mos Generator, Glowsun, Isaak, Komatsu, Void of Sleep and Black Bone have joined on.
I’d expect that means Mos Generator are about to announce a European tour, but I don’t think they’ve done so yet. They’ll head abroad supporting their new album, the excellent Abyssinia (review here), while hopefully Fatso Jetson‘s upcoming LP will be out by then as well. More on that if/when I hear it.
I’ve noted more than a handful of times how crowded the European festival circuit is for this fall, but Heavy Psych Sounds continues to put Italy on the map for heavy rock, its reach extended both domestically and internationally more than ever before, as you can see:
HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS FEST VOL 3 with Atomic Bitchwax, Fatso Jetson, Mos Generator, Giobia, Glowsun, Isaak….
Here to announce the HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS FEST VOL 3.
The Festival will take place in Parma, Italy at Mu Club, 90 minutes down Milan or 45 minutes up Bologna, both are the good spot to arrive with airplane. The shows will be divided between 2 stages.
***Friday 28 October ticket 15 euro **Saturday 29 October ticket 15 euro
Line Up: THE ATOMIC BITCHWAX FATSO JETSON MOS GENERATOR GLOWSUN GIöBIA ISAAK FUZZ ORCHESTRA DUEL DEVILLE KOMATSU VOID OF SLEEP BLACK BONE ……….More bands Tba…..
Posted in Whathaveyou on July 1st, 2016 by JJ Koczan
With the addition of a second batch of four acts to follow-up the first announcement a couple weeks ago, Heavy Psych Sounds Fest Vol. III brings its total bill to eight bands over the course of two nights, Oct. 28 and 29, in Parma, Italy. The festival is of course put together by Heavy Psych Sounds, the Rome-based record label owned by Gabriele Fiori, also guitarist/vocalist for Black Rainbows and Killer Boogie, either of which would make an excellent candidate for a slot as well.
As well as the label, Heavy Psych Sounds‘ tour-booking wing (in accord with Sound of Liberation) is responsible for bringing Fatso Jetson to Europe this fall on an Italian run set to begin Oct. 23. The fest will be near the end of the tour (I’ll post the dates asap) and is one of a series of events taking place over consecutive weekends throughout Europe between September and October, a list that includes Up in Smoke, Desertfest Athens, Desertfest Belgium, and keep it Keep it Low, the latter of which happens just the weekend before, in Switzerland.
Of course, Heavy Psych Sounds Fest Vol. III, like the imprint/booking company from whence it takes its name, has a regional focus as well. While two of the new acts joining on are American and another is French, Isaak are Italian natives, and they join countrymen in the previously announced Giobia and Fuzz Orchestra. That ain’t everybody by any means, but three out of eight (so far) can only be said to be giving the native scene its due.
Here’s the announcement:
Heavy Psych Sounds Records & Booking is proud to announce the:
HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS FEST VOL. III October 28 & 29 Italy, Parma, Circolo Arci MU
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 16th, 2016 by JJ Koczan
Moving from its former homebase in Rome to Parma, Heavy Psych Sounds Fest Vol. III is set for Oct. 28 and 29 at the MU Club. The first bands have just been announced as Fuzz Orchestra, Duel, Giöbia and Deville, but of course there will be more to come in that regard as the two-night event fills out its lineup presumably over the next couple months either one at a time or in batches.
Either way, I’ll take it. Heavy Psych Sounds Records — headed, as noted here often, by Gabriele Fiori of Black Rainbows and Killer Boogie — has done more than anyone in the last decade to promote the cause of Italian heavy rock. From signing native Italian bands to establishing a cross-continental reach with the label to booking tours and fests across Europe for bands domestic and foreign, Heavy Psych Sounds has become a brand synonymous with putting maximum passion behind everything it does. The fest that bears its name seems unlikely to be an exception.
The timing is noteworthy as well. Europe is awash in fests throughout September and October — Up in Smoke, Desertfest Athens, Desertfest Belgium, Keep it Low — so to add Heavy Psych Sounds Fest Vol. III to that pot only makes the lineup opportunities broader as more acts will be on tour. In that regard, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think the Gozu and Holy Grove European run — the confirmed dates for which have yet to be revealed — might make a stop in Parma, considering that’s also a Heavy Psych Sounds production.
That’s not confirmed, of course, so don’t quote me on it. Just a supposition. When I hear more about who’s actually on the bill for Heavy Psych Sounds Fest Vol. III, I’ll let you know. For now, here’s the initial announcement:
Heavy Psych Sounds Records&Booking is proud to announce the:
HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS FEST VOL. III October 28 & 29 Italy, Parma, Circolo Arci MU
First bands announced: ****FUZZ ORCHESTRA**** ***********DUEL*********** **********GIOBIA********** *********DEVILLE*********
Posted in Bootleg Theater on September 30th, 2014 by JJ Koczan
Italian cult doomers Caronte will release their second album, Church of Shamanic Goetia, on Oct. 31 via German imprint Ván Records. Details have yet to surface about the record, which follows a 2013 split with Doomraiser and Caronte‘s 2012 debut LP, Ascension, as well as their 2011 first EP, Ghost Owl, but the four-piece have cut out the middle man and gotten right to the heart of what really matters — i.e., the music — in releasing the new song, “Temple of Eagles,” along with its mystically-themed lyrics. A sample verse:
Along the left hand’s path I climb through the wormhole every man has the cosmos within I’ll keep on expanding to reconnect with it
Yeah, it’s like that. Nothing on Caronte‘s Ascension topped 10 minutes long, so however indicative it might be of the rest of Church of Shamanic Goetia, “Temple of Eagles” is the longest album cutthe Parma unit have put out to date. I guess we’ll see how the rest of the record plays out when the time comes. Until then, “Temple of Eagles” feels less Electric Wizard-y than some of what Caronte have proffered before, which bodes well for their coming more into their own sound, all the more since it’s the first audio from the album to be released. More to come, I’m sure.
Enjoy:
Caronte, “Temple of Eagles”
NEW SONG, NEW VIDEO
We are proud to announce the release date of our new album, “CHURCH OF SHAMANIC GOETIA” which will be released by Van Records. The release date is 31/10/2014 for all Europe.
This is the first extract from the album. Thank you all for the support you have always given. Now take a few minutes, get something to smoke and listen.
Soon more news about the release and the dates of our upcoming live performances.
a gleefully 1968 psych rock guitar lead, shifting into “Más” and its cumbia-informed boogie. In some ways, the songs feel manifested from their own vibe — of course “At the Fairie Bower” has a flute, and so on — but even if Ferrari didn’t know quite where a given piece might end up when he started out putting it together, the end result is not unconsidered or haphazard in any way. If anything, the fact that he’s on his own here speaks to the depth of thought put into each arrangement, from the lullaby guitar and subtle drums before the Westernized raga in “El Sueño de la Curandera” to the lysergic folk dance of “Ballad of the Mugho” at the finish.
