After a first official album and a live "bootleg", Tell No Lies quintet releases "Anasyrma", a co-production by Aut Records and Fonterossa that tends a red thread between Berlin and Tuscany touching Bologna, where the formation is at home: the band is in his sixth year of activity with a new album of original pieces and a programmatic title, confirming itself as the "quintet that manages to combine singability, immediacy, energy and expressive freedom" (RaiRadio3 IT). Anasyrma is ranked among the best 2020 jazz records by Musica Jazz "Top Jazz", Il Giornale della Musica, Bandcamp, SentireAscoltare.
Tell No Lies : ANASYRMA
Aut Records / Fonterossa Records, 2020
Edoardo Marraffa : tenor and sopranino sax
Filippo Orefice : tenor sax
Nicola Guazzaloca : piano, compositions
Luca Bernard : double bass
Andrea Grillini : drums
Guests : Christian Ferlaino (baritone sax), Francesco Guerri (cello), Federico Pierantoni (trombone)
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Listen: https://autrecords.bandcamp.com/album/anasyrma
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REVIEWS EXCERPT
Music full of fire, full of energy, which at times recalls South African jazz, a very strong unity in the sonic continuity of the songs. Improvisational musicians who love to go further, touch the extreme if necessary and in any case express themselves fully. We could call this attitude an experience of truth if we remove all moral value from the word and it is perhaps in this sense that the members of the group led by Nicola Guazzaloca have decided to call themselves Tell No Lies. A quintet that manages to combine singability, immediacy, energy and expressive freedom.
RAI RADIO3 BATTITI - Antonia Tessitore IT
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Pervaded by the thrill of odd times, the disc exudes corporeality, not just because the explicit invitation to dance addressed to the listener looking at Africa but also for the instrumental approach that gives physicality to the sound of all the musicians. Starting from good free memories the group's landing is to a thematic simplicity able to allow the maximum freedom of the musicians relieving them as much as possible of constraints. The result is an immediate and enjoyable music but at the same time robust, thick, deep.
ALIAS - Flavio Massarutto IT
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The next band to come to us from Italy - the Tell No Lies quintet - proved to be an excellent representative of modern jazz, which simultaneously draws on the jazz tradition and contemporary approaches. The musicians of the quintet impressed with their well-balanced interplay, punctuating the melodic and pleasing themes played by the group with incisive solo excursions and interplay of motifs.
PRIMORSKI VAL Radio v živo - Mario Batelić SL
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Distinctive contemporary Jazz with a tinge of unselfconscious funk, the Bologna-based Tell No Lies band is a vehicle for the compositions of pianist Nicola Guazzaloca. Not only does he take advantage of the sound tinctures from the other quintet members – throughout the disc animated tunes move at a crisp pace with echoes of foot-tapping Soul Jazz enhancing the material. Capably projecting moderate as well as intense movement in his compositions, Guazzaloca puts his own stamp on Jazz. With these musicians varied talents very much in evidence, Anasyrma is a disc that can be appreciated by many.
JAZZWORD - Ken Waxman CA
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«Anasyrma is an ancient Greek word and has a wonderful meaning: it indicates the gesture of lifting the skirt and showing the private parts; it exists in many cultures and has the power to drive out the devil, hail, evil, enemies and other stuff. In my opinion the ours is a musical Anasyrma, we show aspects of the music that others hide and call shame». Thus Nicola Guazzaloca, pianist and leader of Tell No Lies, quintet based in Bologna on the second studio album (and a live bootleg), on Aut records. Music, therefore, as an apotropaic ritual to reach a condition of being closer to nature than to society, by calling pagan wild divinities to weddings.
IL MANIFESTO - Nazim Comunale IT
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John Coltrane flung the tune “My Favorite Things” in all different directions—far and wide and out to the horizon—but he always came back to that familiar melody. A well-crafted melody opens up universes of possibility for a jazz improviser. No matter how unstructured or unexpected a course the musician takes, there’s a comfort that comes when the player remains tethered to the logic of a simple, sublime melody. This release from the quintet Tell No Lies is perhaps the best example of that philosophy. This album is thrilling - it’s full of life, and the ensemble ranges out as far as they can go. And every song remains tethered to the melody. No matter how crazy things get, the listener always has that open door to welcome them back home.
DAILY BANDCAMP - Dave Summer USA
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Tell No Lies is the representation of the perfect society.
SANDS-ZINE - Mario Biserni IT
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The truth of a music that is blood, breath, excitement, feet beating in the dust, hot solos bouncing between the frets, strings, skins and reeds. There is the South Africa of Chris McGregor and Dudu Pukwana, there are Mal Waldron and Archie Shepp to feed the sacred fire of inspiration, but above all there is a "black & blues" attitude that invites you to dance with jubilation around the great tree of ancestors.
IL GIORNALE DELLA MUSICA - Enrico Bettinello/Luca Canini IT
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Quintet jazz atypique à la lisière du free, animé par des grooves affirmés et des thèmes tournoyants inspirés par les musiques africaines kwela, balkaniques etc… On songe au Brotherhood of Breath de Chris Mc Gregor ou au Moiré Music de Trevor Watts. Un groupe profondément soudé qui n’hésite pas à larguer les amarres quand le besoin se fait sentir et nous sert des grooves pulsés et super bien balancés. À l’intersection des dérapages et des thèmes antiphonés, se créent des imbrications imprévisibles, formes nouvelles qui enrichissent le déroulement des sept compositions et en transforme la perspective. Du jazz engagé par un quintet magique dont l’identité est immédiatement reconnaissable.
ORYNX - Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg BE
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This third work by Tell No Lies was one of the best records of 2020 in the Top Jazz referendum of Italian critics and the reasons for the consensus are evident. The Bolognese quintet presents seven new pieces by Nicola Guazzaloca that develop in full coherence with the expressive identity of the formation. The music re-proposes the exciting formula of melodically compelling and rhythmically pressing themes, characterized by strong timbre impact, incisive rhythmic iterations and paintings with scorching solos or free improvised comparisons. Stylistically speaking, they are placed between the advanced hard-bop of the Charles Mingus quintet with Don Pullen and George Adams and the historical free with its Chicago developments.
ALL ABOUT JAZZ - Angelo Leonardi IT
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Catering a seven track menu over the course of a playtime of roughly 56 minutes the five piece project is in with a swinging approach from the very first bars of the opening piece "Moondays", a well complex piece fusing a certain smoke-induced Cool Jazz-informed late night approach with extended improvisational sequences and therefore laying a foundation for what's to follow subsequently like the more uplifting and dancefloor friendly "Magenta" working its way towards a massive FreeJazz climax, the slightly spiritual "Leili" which seems to ooze positivity and joy from each and every one of its seemingly AfroBeat / AfroJazz influenced notes as well as the beautifully melodic exercise that is "Anteo" which is kinda implementing a cool AF 80s upper class cocktail party vibe without even touching on being Easy for a fraction of a second just to name a few. Check.
NITESTYLEZ - Baze Djunkiii ND
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From start to finish the group is taken by an intense groove that it transmits to the listener. This happens both in the strongly rhythmic moments of the orchestrated riffs, in which the rapidity of the winds supported by the excellent rhythmic section dominates, and in the moments of freedom and extroversion, which have ample space, however being equally well articulated, with obligatory parts that emerge from the chaos, taking up the drive feeling that characterizes the general narrative of the album: a great album.
KATHODIC Alessandro Bertinetto IT
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One of the best Italian record releases of the year it is the Tell No Lies album.
CONTRORADIO Enrico Romero IT
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Great Black Music is still and always there around the corner, looking interested and even a little surprised at how Tell No Lies manages to keep intact the strength of its origins without being out of time.
BLOW UP - Piercarlo Poggio IT
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Anasyrma is free and untamed, racing out past the borders of jazz, yet also tapped into the tradition of the music. The saxophone duo of Edoardo Marraffa and Filippo Orefice generate a huge sound while maintaining a melodic fluidity capable of graceful changes of direction. Double bassist Luca Bernard and drummer Andrea Grillini are riveting, at times creating a driving rhythmic force with the potential to bring listeners up and out of their seats. Pianist Nicola Guazzaloca is like a solitary wanderer between those factions, achieving a state of unity with whichever element is the object of focus.
THE BEST JAZZ ON BANDCAMP - Dave Summer USA
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The music is saturated with inspiration, with bluesy sounds of African rhythms. The studio album has the same energy, the same enthusiasm as live performances. It is not clear how they managed to build a musical device with a sound so surprising and disconcerting for the precision and the great ideas involved.
PERCORSI MUSICALI - Nicola Barin IT
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The overwhelming Anasyrma (Aut Records) of Tell No Lies, a real war machine led by pianist Nicola Guazzaloca, grooves that leave no way out (Luca Bernard on double bass and Andrea Grillini on drums), the wind arrangements of Edoardo Marraffa (sopranino and tenor) and Filippo Orefice (soprano) and harmonic / rhythmic plots ready to explode in a supervised and powerful chaos, according to the lesson of the historical BYG / Actuel catalog. Great.
SENTIREASCOLTARE - Nazim Comunale IT
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So coming to the end of listening and having to decide what to write about them and the album, I would say that more than my words, you should trust their music. Great record (and it's not a lie).
OFF TOPIC MAGAZINE - Mario Grella IT