FKJ

Sound engineering first, songs later

Vincent Fenton was born on 26 March 1990 in Tours, in the Loire valley, to a French mother and a New Zealand-born father. The stage name is the joke made literal: French Kiwi Juice, shortened to FKJ. His training was not conservatoire but film school, where he studied sound engineering — an unusual route into a career as a multi-instrumentalist, and one that shows in how his records are put together, with the mix treated as part of the composition rather than a finishing job.

He grew up inside his parents' record collection: Queen, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Serge Gainsbourg. By fifteen he had picked up hip hop, rock, electronic music and Jamaican dancehall through different sets of friends, and he has since resisted being filed under any one of them, describing himself instead as a melting pot rather than the product of a single culture.

He emerged through Roche Musique, the Paris independent founded in 2012 by the DJ and producer Jean Janin, who records as Cézaire. The label's roster was central to the wave of new French house that built in the early 2010s, and FKJ was among the artists who pushed that sound away from the dancefloor and towards live instrumentation. He now also releases through Mom + Pop Music.

Eight lucky minutes

The turning point was an accident. Masego had opened for FKJ in Denver in 2016; the two admired each other's playing, and that December Masego flew from Los Angeles to Paris for a single day in the studio. They recorded twelve tracks in one sitting, working almost entirely in first takes and building each idea on the spot.

One of those takes was "Tadow", which the two men improvised with no prior arrangement. FKJ has called it "really truly just an improvised song" and "probably the eight luckiest minutes of our lives". Released in 2017, it carried him from small club rooms to festival billings, and it is still the song he has performed live more often than any other. "Lying Together", "So Much to Me", "Losing My Way" and "Skyline" follow it as the fixtures of his sets.

Four records, one of them just a piano

The self-titled debut French Kiwi Juice arrived in 2017, consolidating the looped, jazz-inflected electronic sound that "Tadow" had advertised. The Ylang Ylang EP followed in 2019. Then came a deliberate swerve: Just Piano in 2021, a solo piano record that stripped away the production layers entirely.

V I N C E N T in 2022 put his own name on the sleeve and was built largely in his own studio. It produced "Greener", a collaboration with Carlos Santana. In 2024 he appeared on "NASA" and "Ctrl" with the Korean singer DEAN, one of a steady run of guest features that kept him visible through a long gap between albums.

Tyber, and the tree that named it

The new album was originally going to be called Shift. It was renamed after an encounter FKJ describes from a meditative retreat involving the plant Koli Boga, during which he says he met a tree-like figure named Tyber — "a very wise being" that answered questions he was asking during a turbulent stretch of his life. "I wanted to close this chapter with what really closed it; the encounter," he has said, describing the record as "a battle and reconciliation with my mind, a kind of discussion with myself". Asked what he came away with, his answer was one word: "Follow. I think that's the answer that I get at the end, that I should follow what my heart is saying deep inside."

Sessions ran across London, Los Angeles, Paris, Brazil and Mexico, though FKJ locates the record's real geography as "my head". It runs twelve tracks in roughly thirty-six minutes and was released on 11 September 2026. The guest list is the widest he has assembled: Baby Rose on "Burst", Eryn Allen Kane on "I Want U", Labrinth on "Little Little Voice", the rapper Bas on "Heavy Heart", and Lucy Park on "How Much Does it Take to Shift it All".

Early notices have been warm without being uncritical. A review published on 25 September 2026 called it an impressive genre-blending session that marks him out as a modern virtuoso of jazz and soul, singled out "Clear" as the track with obvious reach and "Little Little Voice" as the most special thing on the record, and noted that "I Want U" had cleared close to 600,000 YouTube views within a fortnight — while also conceding that the album wanders musically at times.

Where he stands, autumn 2026

Tyber has put him back on the road properly. The Tyber Tour is his first world tour on this scale since 2023, and listings currently run to 42 confirmed concerts across 21 countries. Tickets went on general sale in July 2026, with artist and promoter presales running from 6 July.

The European leg opens on 14 October 2026 at De Roma in Borgerhout, Belgium, then Salle Pleyel in Paris on 16 October, Rockhal in Esch-sur-Alzette on 17 October, TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht on 19 October, VEGA in Copenhagen on 20 October, ASTRA Kulturhaus in Berlin on 21 October, Prague on 23 October, Kesselhaus in Munich on 24 October, Fabrique in Milan on 26 October and X-TRA in Zürich on 27 October, finishing with two nights at Exhibition London on 29 and 30 October.

Asia follows in late November and December: Bangkok on 27 November, Singapore on 29 November, Zepp Kuala Lumpur on 1 December, AsiaWorld-Expo in Hong Kong on 3 December, Seoul on 6 December, New Taipei on 8 December and Tokyo International Forum Hall A on 10 December. New Zealand and Australia come in February 2027, starting at Auckland Town Hall on 20 February, and a long North American run fills April to June 2027, taking in Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Brooklyn and Austin among others.

The rig, and what it is for

The live show is built on the same principle as the records: nothing is programmed in advance if it can be played. FKJ tours with around four guitars, two saxophones and two keyboards, looping parts into Ableton Live as he goes, so an arrangement assembles itself in front of the room rather than arriving finished. It is a format that makes the saxophone the reliable moment of the night — the instrument audiences tend to react to hardest — and it leaves room for improvisation that does not appear on any setlist.

That approach has occasionally been overtaken by staging. Reviewing the Hammersmith Apollo show on 21 March 2023, where FKJ played with the bassist Seth Tackaberry and the drummer Arjan Dube, Will Snell praised his technical mastery and judged that he blooms when performing live, but called the production — a replica home studio, bookended by scenes of domestic pottering, plus a string quartet — a little overzealous, with the constant changes of look creating an unsettling, whirlwind feel. "Tadow" was held back for the encore.