Marylou Mayniel, known as Oklou, has grown into a singular voice in the electronic underground. A producer, vocalist, and composer, she was born in the French countryside, and grew up studying piano and cello at a conservatoire. Holed up in flats in London and Paris with a midi keyboard and laptop, Oklou’s playful and melancholic uploads to Soundcloud cemented her place among a new generation of artists exploring the internet, fusing together patchwork influences and pairing club production with pop vocals. Oklou has worked with Sega Bodega and others on EPs, collaborations and video-game scores. In September 2020, she released her full-length debut, Galore, a romantic, febrile break-up album that she is touring this year in Europe and then the US, supporting Caroline Polachek. TANK spoke with Oklou about her creative process, the forthcoming tour, and her devoted fans, some of whom recently set up a crowdfunder to “Get Oklou some goddamn Airpods!!”

Jan-Peter Westad Are the Airpods you’re wearing the same ones your fans bought you?

Marylou Mayniel Yes! Oh my God – at the beginning I told the organiser I couldn’t accept them. Thank you, but please keep your money! “Marylou,” he said very seriously, “this is a present from your fans. You can’t refuse.” It was super cute.
JPW Your music touches some of your fans in a very deep and personal way. I find this comes from the way you write so honestly about experiences when you’ve been vulnerable, but why do you think this is?

MM I try to convey my emotions as truthfully as possible, which is something most artists are trying to do. It’s true that after Galore I received a few really intense messages that I was able to relate to because they reflected what I was talking about and the energy I was trying to create in the music. Reading those messages was the best reward for me. As a listener myself, the moments where I have a deep connection with something I listen to are some of the best moments of my life. I’m finding that it doesn’t happen so often now. Maybe because I don’t listen to music as much as I did before or maybe I listen to it in a different way. But when it does happen, it’s the most amazing feeling.

JPW Can you remember the last time it happened? 

MM Nothing recently, but I’ve had lots of music crushes. 

JPW Like who?

MM So many. PinkPantheress, underscores, some more obscure Soundcloud stuff. I’ve been listening to a lot of slowed-down trap music, video-game music. It can be anything. They’re all on my one “liked songs” Spotify playlist – it’s a mess.

JPW Where did the idea for Galore first come from?

MM The concept, the narrative, was born in my head during the summer of 2019. I was turning an important page in my life and my relationship at the time. I tried to focus on what was happening at the time, which was a break up – the sadness and loneliness and all the different feelings. At some point I decided to stick with one very clear feeling and memory. I was living in London, and I realised I wasn’t at all OK mentally. At that time, I would literally sit on my bed for hours – I know it sounds like a cliché, but that’s the way it was – and just look outside thinking, “Oh my God, I would love to be somewhere else, somewhere I could maybe experience this sadness in a different way.” This became part of the narrative of the album. It’s a story of wanting to escape and to turn these painful emotions into something beautiful and romantic. Eventually I got out of that apartment and travelled to North America and then to Toronto with some friends. That’s when I had the time and space to think about a longer project. One of the friends I was with was Casey MQ. We started to play our respective demos to each other. He was working on his own album Baby Casey at the time. I came back and we booked tickets to meet again in the Sierra Calderona mountains in Spain, for a three-week residency to work on what we had discussed.

JPW Was it enjoyable to work in that rural landscape?
MM Absolutely. I wasn’t expecting it. Nothing was really planned, which is partly what made the journey of the mixtape so blissful in my memory. Only a week or so before we left, Casey told me he knew someone with a bunker in the mountains with a studio. The location was amazing. We were perfectly isolated; it was a 45-minute walk to the nearest village. They aren’t high mountains like the Pyrenees, but there was still a lot of movement in the landscape. The silence, the colours, the heat – everything felt right.

JPW You can really feel that environment in the album with the sounds of clicking cicadas and howling dogs.
MM Those were recordings from that place. During the night, the dogs would start talking to each other and it would echo through the mountains.
JPW You’re about to embark on your first major tour, including supporting Caroline Polachek in the US. How are you feeling about it?
MM It’s crazy; I’m super happy. It’s the first time in my career as a solo artist that I’m sure of the reason why I’m going to get on stage. I know what I’m going to defend, and I believe in it. In France we say inédit, which means kind of brilliant in an unexpected way. Before, I’ve always done shows without really knowing what I wanted to say, what energy I wanted to give off. I searched for a long time, worked on different formulas. I was hoping I would get more comfortable as a performer, but I wasn’t sure if it was ever going to happen. Before I was mixing club, pop and experimental music. Eventually I learned I’m most comfortable on stage when I’m sat at a keyboard or piano. With the new show there is a more natural framing and I think I’ve found a consistency. I’m also feeling really excited, which has never happened before.
JPW What is the difference between Oklou and Marylou when you are performing?
MM I try to recreate the memories and the feelings that went into Galore in the performance. I still listen to Galore once every three months or so. I still think about it and ask myself how much it helped me process the experience. I think the honest answer is not that much! [Laughs] I had the idea that making art would be therapeutic, but it wasn’t at all. After the mixtape was released, the sadness lasted a long time. This made me realise that maybe what I actually wanted to do was crystallise those feelings. This reflects my own responses to life and art. In music or films, I just love strong stuff. It can be ecstatic joy or profound sadness, but it has to be strong. Galore came from seizing the opportunity to turn these incredibly strong feelings into art; the performances are another opportunity to transform those feelings into something else.
JPW Do you have a sense of where your next project will come from? Have you had the next intense experience or do you need to go out and find it?
MM If someone else wants to come and break my heart, I’m ready! I’m kidding – that is the next challenge for me. I don’t want to believe you have to be suffering to make beautiful things. That’s what is so fascinating and challenging about this job – you always have to find a new recipe.
JPW I think you might find some ecstatic joy on tour with Caroline Polachek.
MM Definitely. Maybe my next album will be about touring with Caroline. I’m already projecting myself into driving and seeing wonderful landscapes through the window. Then performing at the venues and going back to seeing beautiful landscapes through the window. Driving is one of my passions. I don’t know if I will drive the tour bus – I’m not sure I want to take that risk – but I’m happy.

JPW Alongside Galore, a lot of your output is playful. Your Avril23 Soundcloud, for example, is full of one-minute snippets, pop remixes, Enya loops. Do you plan to revisit that more light-hearted experimenting or has that time passed?
MM I definitely don’t want to believe that time has passed! It’s a sad thing to say and I’m trying to change it, but the last time I made actual music was when I wrote Galore. I haven’t touched the software apart from doing collabs or remixes. I’m a slow worker, so I need time to validate something. With working on the live show, doing so many other things for the project, I haven’t had that time to play around. I miss it terribly, and it’s also really important, because if I don’t do that I don’t make demos. The things I upload on Avril23 are the basis of so many releases. I still go back to it all the time to get ideas. I can’t wait for the moment where I can be bored again. ◉