'Transparent Winter'
CD
Silentes / Seven Solar Metals (2012, I) - (Season Two)

 

After the enthusiastically acclaimed release on Tokyo's legendary P.S.F. label, hailed as a return to the ancient spirit of Japanese national poetry, PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST simply demonstrate there's anything else like their music around the world right now. The trio of Ramona Ponzini (Praxinoscope, Z'ev, Black Magic Disco) with Roberto & Maurizio Opalio (aka My Cat Is An Alien) returns on planet Earth for a new full length release of extended songs. PPOPG create some wonderfully fragile and unusual experiments that fall somewhere between folk, psychedelia and drone. Ramona Ponzini sings in Japanese as well as contributing furin, metal and wooden Japanese wind chimes. These are combined with Maurizio Opalio on acoustic guitar, and Roberto Opalio on mini keyboard, bodhran, alientronics, and wordless vocalizations. The trio's eclectic setup helps them create some truly luscious and mysterious music that is perfectly fragile, strange, distant and delicate.
You already had a little taste of the work in October 2011, when Blackest Rainbow Records released a limited and now sold-out LP edition featuring 2 tracks of the album ('Mars Appears' and 'The Mountain'), presented here in an alternate mix version. This CD contains the whole recording session of the work entitled 'Transparent Winter', including 33 minutes of previously unreleased material ('Notes From A Telephone Conversation', 'Winter Is Coming', 'Ochitsubaki'), plus a bonus ghost track, for a total of 80 minutes of entranced music! While the short, final track 'Ochitsubaki' is still inspired by Yosano Akiko's poetic work, the entire rest of the work features lyrics excerpts from Takamura Kotaro's poems carefully selected by Ramona Ponzini.

"Otherworldly is maybe the most apt description for their fragile, distanced songcraft, compositions which transport us to liminal fantasy spaces of gently suspenseful psychedelia, strangely inviting and comforting trance-like states". (Boomkat)

     
  'Transparent Winter'
LP
Blackest Rainbow (2011, UK)
BRR220

'Transparent Winter' follows on from the debut release on the always excellent Time-Lag label and the latest, enthusiastically acclaimed CD on Tokyo's legendary P.S.F. records. Painting Petals On Planet Ghost is the trio of Ramona Ponzini with Roberto & Maurizio Opalio (aka My Cat Is An Alien). Here they return for a new full length vinyl release on Blackest Rainbow. PPOPG create some wonderfully fragile and unusual experiments that fall somewhere between folk, psychedelia and drone. Ramono Ponzini sings in Japanese as well as contributing 'furin, metal and wooden japanese wind chimes'. These are combined with Maurizio Opalio on acoustic guitar, and Roberto Opalio on 'mini keyboard, bodhran, alientronics, and wordless vocalizations'. The trio's eclectic setup helps them create some truly luscious and mysterious music that is perfectly fragile, strange, distant and delicate. 'Mars Appears' is a hazy dream piece with layered guitars, strange electronics and Ramono's perfectly delivered Japanese vocals drawing the listener in surrounded by a strange but perfect fitting created by the Opalio brothers musical output. 'The Mountain' is equally as otherworldy as the previous sides track, with swirling strings and out of this world electronics created by Roberto and Maurizio. Whilst Ramona's vocal are almost delivered in a trance like state. A extremely beautiful record with a gorgeous organic feel to it. The record is housed in a sleeve featuring film photographs of flowers.
Edition of 250 copies pressed on 140gram virgin vinyl.

     
 

'Haru no omoi'
CD
PSF Records (2009, Japan)
PSFD-190


"Ramona Ponzini, young vocalist of Italian PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST, marvellously gave new life to the precious soul of Japan - the soul that contemporary Japan has lost these days." PSF Records - Tokyo

Haru No Omoi is the third full length release from Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, the project of My Cat Is An Alien's Maurizio and Roberto Opalio featuring Ramona Ponzini (Black Magic Disco, Praxinoscope) on vocals. The MCIAA duo provide expertly restrained accompaniment with guitar, keyboard, and percussion of the spacious gong/cymbal/bell variety to create a minimalist realm for Ponzini's Japanese singing and spoken word that is all together captivating. This is an album of sparse, hypnotic folk and subtle drone, but it inhabits a galaxy containing a warmth and richness in detail quite unlike anything else the Opalios have laid their hands on. Track two, 'Sakura No Hana No Oto Ga Kikoeru,' is a variation (or maybe the same exact version?) of the same song featured on the band's stunning 2005 self-titled debut release on Time-Lag. Housed in a heavy mini-gatefold sleeve. "Every track recorded in a different mystic location of the Western Alps, Piedmont, Italy between winter 2004, early fall 2006 and January 2009."
Selection of all tracks by Hideo Ikeezumi of PSF Records, Tokyo.

       
  PAINTING PETALS ON PLANET GHOST / MYKEL BOYD

split 7"
Somnimage (2008, USA)
 

standard edition (limited to 200 copies) 7" on white vinyl in opaque wrap-over sleeve.

artist edition (limited to 50 copies) includes two unique Polaroid photos, one from Ramona Ponzini (taken in Japan)and one from Mykel Boyd (taken in Illinois, USA), both signed.

PPOPG bring the mellow on their side with a piece entitled 'I lose consciousness', with a sweet acoustic guitar intro and a mantra of Japanese chant and wind chimes, all floating over field recordings from the gardens of Kanazawa, Japan.
Mykel Boyd's side consists of processed field recordings creating a very nice ride for those with a ticket.

 
   
  'Fallen Camellias'
CD
A Silent Place (2008/ IT)
ASP35

 

Second full-lenght album from Italy's Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, 'Fallen Camellias' is a tribute to one of the greatest poetess ever, Japanese Yosano Akiko, whose work in literature in the early 1900's is considered as manifesto of the Japanese Romanticism. Imagine a Vashti Bunyan or a early Marianne Faithful singing sweet melodies in Japanese language, and you can have an idea of the musical and poetical universe of Painting Petals On Planet Ghost. Here Ramona Ponzini's singing comes from the use of Akiko's selected original poems in Japanese along with Ponzini's own typical soft and enchanting wordless vocals style, a out of time muse-like chant hypnotizing the ears and the minds of the listeners. The songs of 'Fallen Camellias' are built on acoustic guitar melodies composed by Maurizio Opalio, and are made of the same pure, melancholic essentiality of the legendary Nick Drake; while, after contributing arrangements of the most ecstatic nature, the other brother Roberto Opalio has played the role of producer of the whole album, searching for not only an aesthetic, but especially an emotional ideal of perfection. In the heart of winter covered by snow, let 'Fallen Camellias' be your warm blanket, as well as the promise of a new future spring. Here's a special Painting Petals On Planet Ghost's dedication: 'For those who drink the wine of love springtime is forever'.

 
 
  'Oounabara'
1-sided 12" lathe cut + DVD /
C20 cassette
Opax Records (2006)
OPX 024A/C
 

Special lathe cut vinyl edition by Peter King in New Zealand; private press edition of 50 copies, with original Ramona's copper-gold ink drawing on the flipside of the vinyl; also included a Roberto Opalio's silent short film on DVD-r inspired by music + art, playable together or separately; handnumbered.

"This 15 minutes song is the key-work follow up to their acclaimed debut album on Time-Lag Records. Here Roberto and Maurizio Opalio, aka My Cat Is An Alien, act in the darkness of the outer space, while Ramona Ponzini lights up the autumnal air with her enchanting voice, along with her Japanese percussions and wind chimes; by reitering one only Japanese word (whose meaning is 'Ocean'), she creates a universe of pure magic. Radical minimalism, folk, psychedelia are the main terms that rule this mysterious chant and intimate prayer; but what you'll find here is extremely far from any unuseful relation with what you already know, representing 'Oounabara' a totally still unknown dimension of what the music of today should be: a window on Tomorrow.



   

  "s/t"
LP / CD
Time-Lag Records
(2005/2007, USA)
TIME-LAG 030

 
Debut recording from Italy's Opalio brothers (My Cat Is An Alien) and Ramona Ponzini. An esoteric and mesmerizing trip through space, minimalism, and emotion. Each track recorded at a different mystical location in the Western Alps, and centered around Ramona's beautiful vocals, all of which are sung in traditional japanese. Maurizio & Roberto add sparse accompaniment by means of toy piano, alien keyboard tones, antique accordion, percussion, tape effects, and some particularly evocative acoustic guitar. The whole thing comes off alternately as deeply meditative or chillingly haunted, depending on your attention & mood. Silence, space & ritual are hugely important here, with notes & words hovering frozen in time... while the My Cat Is An Alien moniker might leave some folks scratching their heads, here the Painting Petals On Planet Ghost name nails it : fragile, beautiful, cosmically isolationist, and totally spooked..."

© 2010 Painting Petals On Planet Ghost