Over the last 18 months or so OKONSKI (a nu age jazz trio led by Steve Okonski, the classically trained keyboardist with Durand Jones and the Indications and featuring bassist Michael Isvara “Ish” Montgomery and Indications’ drummer and sometime vocalist, Aaron Frazer) have won plenty of friends with a series of gentle, meditative singles and their acclaimed ‘Magnolia’ LP.
Right now the trio are preparing the release of a brand new album, ‘Entrance Music’ – due February 28th via Colemine. (Art work above). The music was recorded over a five-day session and the album was actually one of the first to be committed to tape at Terry Cole’s Portage Lounge (Cole is the head boy at Colemine, of course). Indeed Steve Okonski is quick to praise Cole’s knowledge and input: “It was a new setup, but with Terry behind the dials it felt very familiar. I can’t emphasize enough how much Terry feels like a fourth member [of the band]because of the space he’s curating, the energy he is bringing, and the production ideas.”
While we wait for the album, the set’s first single is now good to go and it’s a gentle, pastoral piece, ‘October’. It delivers a calming atmosphere and an ethereal tranquillity but if you know “the Okonski sound”, your’d except that. It’s a melancholic eulogy for sure, but in this crazy, topsy turvy world that kind of slow resonance should always be made welcome!
