Honesty Flowers’ is the fourth studio album from Italian multi-instrumentalist Alessio Ferarri under the Upupayāma moniker.
An epic double vinyl 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.
Fuzz Club Press Release
And to be fair – Fuzz Club have pretty much summed up the album there.
It is inevitable that music genres come and go, and sometimes come back again, depending on the prevailing winds of fashion. Psychedelia first raised its head in the sixties and has never really gone away. It has mutated, evolved and influenced a dozen other scenes – from the ‘Alice In Wonderland’ psychedelic-post-punk in the 1980s, through the ‘second summer of love’, the indie-dance crossover in the 1990s and the full on dayglo psytrance scene. And, of course, it has been ever present on the festival scene.
Here at Peppermint Iguana we have always had a thirst for psychedelia. And over recent years, our thirst has been well and truly quenched by a glut of young bands creating a sound heavily influenced by music that was around long before they were born. And it’s not just a UK thing, it has gone global. There are bands as far apart as Australia and Canada knocking out new original psychedelic vibes that do far more than just recreate the past, they put their own twenty-first-century twist on things and come up with some truly special music.
Italy’s Upupayāma are a prime example of how psychedelia knows no geographical boundaries. Blending tribal percussion with funky bass riffs and fuzzy guitar licks over the top they create the perfect groove to feed heads, hearts and feet. Close your eyes and you are transported to a dancehall filled with a liquid lightshow and blissed out dancers.
But who are Upupayāma?
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 Alessio 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.”
This is one of the most original vibes we have heard in a long while. It is funky, psychedelic and tribal all at the same time. And we absolutely love it.
Time to dig out the diary and the atlas to work out where we can catch them live*
*Their debut London performance at the Other Side Psych Weekender on Saturday 19th of September at Strongroom in London.
Buy the album here – FUZZ CLUB
You can read an interview with Upupayāma here on the Psychedelic Baby website