Oklou’s dreamy sounds takes a darker tone on her debut album ‘choke enough’

The moments that fuel my sleepless nights come in thoughts that arise in a hazy fog and leave with a whisper only after I’ve woken up enough to process what has popped in my head. In that dream state, the absurd can become just another refrain, its repetition carries a deeper meaning than lucidity can sift through.

Oklou’s debut album, “choke enough,” captures a dream-state and injects honest, lucid reflection into the heart of it. The French singer, producer and DJ, whose name is pronounced “okay Lou,” last dropped music with a tender 2020 mixtape and added collaborations with artists such as AG Cook, Caroline Polachek and Flume. After a two-year period of no new releases, she began rolling out singles for this album in September 2024. 

There’s an ebb and flow to the album that feels like a derailed dream, like a calculated lack of control over the energy throughout the tracks; it’s repeatedly bolstered by a buildup of electronic pulses and lyrics that become increasingly raw.

Capturing a snapshot of moments when the digital and natural worlds collide, she lands on voyeurism a couple times creating a darker more potent dissonance. Introducing this idea for the first time on “Thank u for recording,” I had to stop and process the words: “A killer’s on the loose ten thousand miles away / Thank you for rеcording (You for recording, ooh)

/ My little AV disaster / I watchеd the house burn down ’cause I know that it has an end / Thank you for recording (You for recording, ooh).” Balancing the sentiment with an uncomfortable amount of sincerity, it’s a poignant realization of our deflections in the digital age. 

Dystopian, angular lyrics seep through “plague dogs,” nodding to the animated 1982 film. The fragmented verses leave enough space for the listener to explore its meaning, to find four different ways to take one phrase. She paints a picture in the surveillance of second-hand experience to contrast and coordinate with seeing first hand, with lines like, “Today on the news they showed them / Oh, I was there, yeah, I was there / I can tell you what happened / Riding along the coast and amongst the sea foam, I saw them / Drawing poems in the sand with the tires / Dancing with helicopters above.” Within the subjectivity of her words, a specificity emerges, a scene so absurd, it becomes something the listener can take as their own.

In the accelerated moments of the record, songs like “family and friends” and “obvious,” there are times when the hit-hats and spaced-out bass can feel too familiar to the build-up of an early 2010s club track. But the beat never drops as those songs customarily do, the song fades off and floats into ambient bliss. 

The droning electronic pulses and resounding french horn that open “ict” make the track a standout from the start. Featuring the production of AG Cook, the song starts off feeling like something out of Astrid Sonne’s catalog, and shifts toward the album’s hyperpop leanings. Once the lyrics are introduced, the production picks up as if it’s realizing the whimsical absurdity of her love letter to the driver of an ice cream truck.

Amid the fantastical worlds she builds in her lyrics, there’s a deep sense of reflection. Her words feel like fragments torn from late night ruminations. The dynamic production keeps the album alluring; the intensive layering of sound is able to maintain a sense of sharpness and purpose. She’s able to create a world within the album that feels like an authentic exploration of moments that cause her to choke up.