Tony Esposito
La Banda Del Sole

THE REVIEW

Tony Esposito, perhaps you remember him for that Austro-Napolitan look and for Kalimba de luna. Some know that he was and is an incredibly skilled percussionist. I remember when he used to call himself Toni, with an "i". When he took a path focused on quality, with no eyes on commerciality. When he educated mandolins in the vainest cult of prog-jazz-rock. I remember that just three years after this (just to mention an example dear to me), he was a guest on the same stage alongside the Perigeo: Montreux was a point of arrival, and after only four albums Toni – I emphasize, with an "i" – had already arrived.

I don’t want to disparage the later works, those from the '80s. But I’m not particularly interested in them compared to the confidence with which he absorbed the great classics of electric jazz, jazz rock, and  Latin jazz, but also  tribal music, Afro influences, Mediterranean, and South American. A music sponge capable of reworking everything according to his own ear.

This 1978 album (the fourth, in fact) for me represents one of the peaks of Neapolitan production that is "apart" and very distinct from the great traditional Neapolitan music. I place it on the same level of importance as the debut of Napoli Centrale on one side – the more experimental side – and "Bella ‘mbriana", Pino Daniele’s 1982 album, on the more passionate and direct side.

Tony Esposito’s music lives on its own. There are no words accompanying the instruments. It’s a continual nourishment of aspirations, intuitions, knowledge, pure genius, and a bit of craft. An artist with great instinct, therefore, and with a concrete and lively compositional flair: the tracks of this album, in fact, start from the Mediterranean to traverse the distant seas of South American and African fantasy, while maintaining consistently a level of brilliance, I would say, British for the abstraction of some passages and atmospheres totally devoted to the coldest prog rock.

This is music that makes you feel at ease: sometimes it feels like being at home watching a carefree movie, other times it almost feels like watching a variety show, yet other times like being in a '70s crime film, ultimately being right in the heart of that creative Naples, with a belly full of ideal colors flowing through the countless streets that cross it.

The compositional quality of the work highlights a great taste in the choice of arrangements, which make the tracks elegant and ever-changing: ranging from naïve atmospheres to moments when it feels like being catapulted into a space dimension, there are moments when the idea of black Brazil materializes, and others when one thinks of a potential other side of Le Orme.

A composite panorama that develops along the horizontal dimension: that of the intersection between genres and eclecticism for a succession of songs that have very little in common with one another, except for that always recognizable hand of the author.

Recommended, for liveliness and quality, to those who appreciate music in its sincerest manifestations. In this album, as in the previous three, the opportunity to re-evaluate a surprising artist.