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Buy lossless digital version in our Bandcamp digital storeTracklist
01. Chipirones 09.18
02. Scoulta 03.28
03. Tzoridi 04.34
04. Diva 05.02
05. Bagai 04.52
06. Impro 04.50
07. Mantica 07.31
08. Zavata 07.27
Total time: 47.07
Credits
Recorded by Marco Marangoni at Duna Studio in Russi, ITA, on November 30 and December 1, 2024
Mixed by Andrea Caprara in Bologna, ITA, on April 11, 12 & 13, 2025
Mastered by Andrea Scardovi at Duna Studio in Russi, ITA, on April 18, 2025
Graphics and layout by Nicola Guazzaloca
Produced by Nicola Guazzaloca
Published by Aut Records
Description
With Mantica, the quintet Tell No Lies opens a new chapter in its journey. After three albums and 10 years of activity, the band led by pianist Nicola Guazzaloca returns with a music that weaves composition and improvisation into a form that is always shifting and unpredictable.
If Hide Nothing highlighted the vitality of South African jazz, Mantica takes up that legacy and pushes it further, exploring a soundscape where the group’s collective voice becomes the creative engine. The leader’s compositions serve as the starting point, but it is the collective work that transforms them into ever-changing landscapes: episodes of burning intensity alternate with moments of suspended lyricism, in a flow without clear boundaries.
Adding further richness to the album is the participation of numerous guests, who expand the timbral palette and help reinforce the project’s choral and multicoloured character.
The result is an album that confirms the hallmark of Tell No Lies—capable of combining immediacy and complexity, energy and lyricism—while at the same time opening to new perspectives, with an expressive urgency deeply rooted in the history of the Italian jazz and experimental scene.
