Honesty Flowers by Upupayāma

'Honesty Flowers' is the fourth studio album from Italian multi-instrumentalist Alessio Ferarri under the Upupayāma moniker. An epic double album set due for release May 29th 2026 on Fuzz Club, 'Honesty Flowers' finds Upupayāma's ever mind-blowing brew of organic psychedelic rock meets global grooves at its most percussive, lively and distorted. Equally hedonistic and heady, it courses through rhythmic funk grooves, doubled-down scorched fuzz riffing, winding motorik jams, tranquil drones and pastoral acid-folk across its seventy minute run time.

A six-piece band live, where things take a more ever-evolving improvisation-based approach (see their recent 'Live At Fuzz Club Festival '25' LP), on the recordings Ferarri writes, plays and records everything himself – guitars, keys, flute, sitar, and an arsenal of percussion all feature. Never not working on new music, Ferarri started laying down these new tracks in his home barn studio in a small mountain village overlooking the city of Parma before its 2024 predecessor 'Mount Elephant' even hit the racks. The result was mixed by Chris Smith at Kluster Sounds (Kikagaku Moyo, Wax Machine) and mastered by Joseph Carra (King Gizzard, Babe Rainbow, ORB)

On the new record, Ferarri says: "Honesty Flowers was born from listening to lots of funk music from all over the world, lots and lots of African music, and from listening to myself as I spent whole nights playing all kinds of percussion instruments. I would fall into a sort of trance and play the same rhythm for hours on congas or on a djembe. It's an album that was born above all from the beauty of being able to narrate the unknown and recognise yourself in it, which could translate into telling stories and bringing them to life."

"The intro to 'Gilded Meditations' comes to mind, where I feel like I've entered the hollow of a tree trunk and found a group of people engaged in an ancestral ritual. I think of 'Fliiim' and experience it as if Can had wanted to write a funk song, while 'Laliīmph' continues the whole thing, taking us to a Mongolian prairie on horseback towards an unknown destination, like a flâneur of the steppe. 'Mystic Chords of Memory' is still permeated by the funk I mentioned earlier, but it sounds like it's being played by some crazy and slightly pissed-off Peruvians. 'Oyob' is halfway between a pagan ritual and a classic rock 'n' roll track. 'In the Solstice Sun' speaks, if I may say so, of the corruptibility of human beings on a backdrop of gentle drone music, before transforming into pure fun, as if to say, 'What would happen if tomorrow we all didn't give a damn about anything and sent everything to hell?’ 'Sound Mirrors' is exactly what the title says: two sounds that mirror each other, allowing past and future echoes to be here and now. 'Mokushō' is a song that dates back to the first album, or rather, it was a collection of riff notes, sounds that I revisited for this album. I like to think that there is always an element of continuity with my previous works. It's how I imagine waking up in the morning in rural Japan. 'Old Sky, Wandering Clouds' also dates back to the time between the first and second albums. It's the night rain, the trees dripping in the early morning and you're happy. 'Yuya' is a ritual dance from deep Africa. 'Baobab' is a group of misfits on an old caravan, it's a never-ending party. 'Morning Temple' is when you wake up in the morning and you know something wonderful is going to happen."

Music from the barn