The energy was electrifying last night during the Oklou concert in the Apollo room in Barcelona. It can be because, as Charli XCX says, niche music is fashionable. And Oklou’s has a five -year popular: it is exciting when you go from listening to ‘Galore’ (2020) in loop for years on your mobile or computer, recommending it to your friends; To do it surrounded by fans who love the album just like you. He puts the hair on end when he begins to sound ‘God’s Chariots’ and absolutely everyone sings that “I Woke Up in a Heatwave, and Everybody’s Gone”.
Some of the best moments of the ‘Choke Aough’ (2025) presentation show in Barcelona produced large euphoria starts, not only those who came accompanied by raveros rhythms such as ‘Harvesy Sky’ -apoteosica- but also those that were projected in the form of ballad: in the world of Oklou and its fans, ‘Blade Bird’ is their own ‘Wonderwall’.
That euphoria contrasted with what happened on the tables. The scenery, chaired by a white curtain on which different colors were projected, showed a panorama of spotlights, lamps, microphones and cables. Marylou Mayniel, visibly pregnant, and her musician, Florian, known as holder, guitar and keyboards, played music as if they were at home. The stage, adapted to Oklou’s physical state, allowed the artist to sing or stretched. She joked that the public will never have seen someone “act so slowly,” but I guess has never seen Jamiroquai act after a back operation. Likewise, Oklou has a special charism that makes anything matter, even if the autotune fails, as is the case in the show.
Perhaps that charisma is related to the fact that Oklou knows very well what she does and shows: she is a conservatory musician, during the show touches a kind of sweet flute, when not the acoustic guitar, and is an absolutely prodigious melodies composer, in addition to an infraval vocalist. When he leaves the autotune and sings ‘The Fish Song’ of Underscores to the guitar, with a warmth in the voice only comparable to that of Hope Sandoval, cuts his breath. Is this the path of the next album? It is the icing on the cake that the guitar emits an intense light from its resonance box, as if it were magical. Maybe it is.
On stage, Oklou transmits absolute security. Another thing is that his artistic proposal is optimally transferred to the live. Sometimes not and sometimes. When their songs break in bases of House or Uk Garage, as in the celebrated ‘Take Me by the Hand’, which does not dispense with the voice of Bladee, reproduced from the speakers; The room can come down. The Eurodance of ‘Harvest Sky’ steps strongly live. The public boot as crazy. However, I am not sure that the high volume of instruments – sometimes incurring little welcome distortions – benefit Marylou’s most intimate productions, such as ‘Family and Friends’ or ‘Endless’, so lent to lonely consumption.
Even so, the curiosity with which Oklou addresses his work is fascinating, mixing influences of pop, R&B, classical music and medieval music with futuristic and nebulous electronic textures. His voice, a digitalized thread, sounds curiously human. That same curiosity leads Oklou to appear on the armed stage with a flashlight, illuminating the darkness of the public as if he had just crossed a portal towards another dimension and tried to find out where he has arrived. She is a musical explorer who immerses himself in deep waters in ‘Thank you for recording’ -which opens the show- or the unpublished ‘Side’, or that leads the artist to transform ‘Fall’ into an aggressive piece by Ag Cook, when the original version could not sound more clothing.
That the shouts of “and beautiful, and beautiful, and queen, and queen” would reach the beginning of the Oklou concert and not in the end show that the public was predisposed to enjoy Oklou to clothe from the beginning. It is clear that ‘Choke Aough’ is going to consolidate this artist and also that, in no way, ‘Galore’ can be considered an EP (Oklou calls it during the concert) when it is composed of 11 cuts and its cult is typical of a debut album itself. Above all, there was a desire for an intimate concert of Oklou to gather his fans – who are already thousands – in a single room, not in front of the impersonal scenario of a festival.
