Oklou

Genre: Electronic

Origin: None

“choke enough is a very intense album for me. it’s filled with directions, tentatives, irregularities, reflecting my last years on this planet, as my heart and conscience has really decentered from myself” says Marylou Mayniel, aka Oklou.

Dreams, nostalgia and fantasy are the themes of her debut album choke enough. It is the perfect balance between reality and imagination.

After establishing herself as one of the most promising artists of her generation—collaborating with names like Flume, Mura Masa, Pomme and Flavien Berger, and remixing stars including Dua Lipa and Angèle (“Fever”), Caroline Polachek (“Door”) and A.G. Cook (“Being Harsh”)—the Frenchwoman took the time to reflect on her career and her desires.

choke enough is therefore a first album imagined as a reflection on the very status of the artist, lulled by productions that are the signature of the “Oklou” style: between ambient soundscapes (nourished by intensive listening to instrumental music) and rhythms reminiscent of club energy (as in the title “Harvest Sky” with underscores, a brilliant punk artist based in New York).

Its eponymous title, “Choked Enough,” reflects this desperate quest for sensations, the need to be touched by grandiose events. “It’s the first song on the project,” explains the artist. “I remember listening to it in my car in Los Angeles, on one of those huge roads that circle the city. I parked in a dark corner, a sort of wasteland, and the words came suddenly, like a burst. A need to tell the story of my pursuit of intense emotions.” A bit like her own father, in a permanent struggle against a dreary daily life, dictated by a careerist society.

Oklou is part of this generation of artists born on the Internet, whose virtual identity is inseparable from their creative journey. After classical training in piano and cello, it was her computer that marked her entry into the world of electronic music, which remains hers to this day.

This path notably facilitated her international emergence, through collaborations with Mura Masa, A. G. Cook, and EASYFUN (both producers of Brat, Charli XCX’s latest event album), and especially through a long tour promoting Galore, her first mixtape (2020, Because Music).

A real turning point in Oklou’s artistic life, Galore allowed her to find a place at the heart of the international electronic scene (Boiler Room, NTS Session, Colors), thanks to her intimate, hushed productions and her innovative vision—praised by a demanding press. She has played concerts all over France (with sold-out dates at Hasard Ludique and Gaîté Lyrique) and the world, opening for artists like Oneohtrix Point Never and Caroline Polachek.

If Galore was born from an “emotional bubble,” as Oklou puts it, Choke enough, her first album, is in every way its opposite. “This album is less about me, and more about the things I’ve observed,” she says, as if to kill her own ego.

This new opus took two and a half years to create. To bring it to life, the singer and producer teamed up—as is her habit—with producer Casey MQ. The result is a mix of pop and ambient, influenced by peers from the electronic scene as well as her own experiences and, above all, her doubts.

Choked Enough is the crystallization of an artist’s search for a collective. A permanent struggle between elaborate imagination (like the ship evoked in “endless”) and the most trivial daily life. “I see it as built on permanent back-and-forths between a life anchored in reality and another path that takes root in fantasies.”

A bit like her own parents—two radical people “in their philosophy of life as in the way they perceive beauty,” Oklou explains.

For this album, her voice is in all its states, echoing the experimental spirit of the British hyperpop scene. Danny L Harle, a key figure and trusted advisor, also contributed to the project (he’s also behind Radical Optimism, Dua Lipa’s latest album), and rapper Bladee—pioneer of hyperpop and a member of the Drain Gang—joins her for a collaboration on the track “take my by the hand.”

“I can’t imagine a life without dreams, without spending time appreciating beauty, but I need to be anchored to the ground to continue paying attention to what’s happening around me,” Oklou assures.

With Choked Enough, she places herself at the perfect balance between reality and imagination. “Are you human? Are you even alive?” she asks in the track “family & friends,” as if in an ultimate quest for truth.

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