It was bound to happen: The world without borders, Okou create chaos in our fixed ideas. They have created a music that is sophisticated, acoustic, spiritually inhabited, free and played as if it didn't belong to time.
Okou is neither Folk, Pop, World, or Soul but a turmoil of all these. They don't resemble anything known but are immediately familiar to our ears as if we had grown up listening to them.
Okou is a new adventure: Tatiana Heintz & Gilbert Trefzger met only 3 years ago. From a French father and an Ivorian mother, she lived her young life in Ouest Africa. In a bar she meets Gilbert Trefzger, a Swiss guitarist from an Egyptian roots who studied the Oud, Slide Guitar and Banjo. «Immediately something happened musically between the two of us». She lives in Paris, he is between Basel and Berlin, they compose and record each on their side, «but to finalise a song we need to be together. This is why we have named our album 'Serpentine'».
The album was recorded in 5 days in live conditions. The casting which was directed by Jean-Philippe Allard and Jay Newland, who produced the album, was exceptional: On double bass Ira Coleman (Betty Carter, Laurent de Wilde, Dee Dee Bridgewater), on percussion and drums Andrew Borger (Norah Jones, Tom Waits), on Tuba Dave Bargeron (Blood, Sweat and Tears, Gerry Mulligan &...), on Accordeon and Piano Brian Mitchell (Bob Dylan, Mary J. Blige, Dolly Parton), the string arrangements are signed Gil Goldstein (Richard Bona, Juliette Greco, Paul Simon, Herbie Hancock) Gil also played the Accordeon. «We didn't need to talk to understand each other, says Tatiana. Everything was based on energies more than on a concept.» Which makes Serpentine sound like an outstanding balancing act. We think they are influenced by Otis Redding, then we surprise them closer to Woody Guthrie, until their music reminds us of Sade or Taj Mahal...
They insist: «Our music is homemade, in the energy that we live through in that precise moment.»
Tatiana writes in a dreamy and sensual English as well as in a poetic, half-rock, half-Verlaine French. In both languages and in all genres of music they approach, the desir is equal: «We try to serve the songs, which are energies that transcend through us. They are entities that we try to welcome the best way we can.»
