FKJ

FKJ sounds like paper lanterns reflected in a dusk lagoon, a salt breeze across bare shoulders.

(you should really listen to this while you read)

FKJ sounds like summer spent hidden from the world on a nameless island.

FKJ - it stands for French Kiwi Juice, a suitably tropical name - is Vincent Fenton, a 28 year old Parisian. He makes ear porn for my music holes.

Somewhere between multi-chrome nu jazz and the funky pocket of french house, FKJ’s eponymous debut album glides over black sands and blooms in warm water. Drawing on soul and R&B as much as electronic influence, his compositions change shape like silhouettes in waning light, molded by cascading musical tides. Celebration and lament tangle their fingers under vibrant multi-instrumental tapestries and lose track of themselves amid saxophonic fireworks. It’s hard to believe one person could create such consistently lush and nuanced music.

Well, these days, anyone can do everything. It’s just hard to get it so right.

The last ten years have seen a massive bloom of affordable sampling and looping technology blur the lines between producer and performer, DJ and live band. Acts like Disclosure and Odesza have taken some of the largest stages in the world with drumsticks and a junkyard’s worth of sampling gear.

Every frontier technology has its detractors, however, and I’m sad to say that I have my issues with many producers turned one-man-band. I love Kasbo’s brand of glimmering futurebass, but his live performance at Holocene last winter left an awful taste in my mouth.

Watching a performer hammer a drum pad into a massive buildup only to dance away from all of his instruments while a MacBook Air handles the next minute of drop is a great way to shatter any illusion of risk. Choosing one arbitrary layer of a song to play live while Ableton autopilots the rest is worse than just DJ-ing in my opinion. I left that show early, unable to overcome my cynicism.

FKJ is my solution. FKJ doesn’t fuck around.

“Okay I can’t use this. You have to do it in time. Let’s try this.”

OooooooooooaaAAAH, our voices swell. He holds the mic out farther, whips his fingers across one of many sample pads. He carves a neat chunk our of the sonic tidal wave and lays it neatly alongside the bassline as we all absolutely lose it.

As track after track break over me like warm surf, the young prodigy onstage flows from a sunsoaked rhodes-groove stippled with saxophone into a soulful four-beat. He then brings in the caramel vox of (((O))) - his wife, June Marieezy. Vibin’ Out is a slow swaying track warm with an organ and simple, lilting vocals, but he stretches the encore version in a 10-minute odyssey the entire venue sings with him.

I let the weight of my DSLR bounce on my hip for a while as I float amongst paper lanterns across a nameless dusk lagoon.

Watch any (all) of his performances in Red Bull Studios around the world and you’ll quickly realize how much work everyone else could be doing. Percussion. Bass. Guitars. Synths. Piano. Sax. Vocals. It’s all live looped and layered right in front of you. The only thing you don’t see him do is record the actual drum samples he just arranged into oh god damn, that beat though.

“Give it up for my boy Tom Misch on that last one.”

We’re one song into the show and it’s difficult to hear FKJ over the roaring crowd. “I’m going to keep going and play some new beats i’ve been experimenting with.”

I wonder absentmindedly at the structural soundness of the Crystal Ballroom as the screams of way too many people for this venue obliterate his words.

The next 45 minutes of unreleased music pass as a topical storm of vocal samples, pitch-bent pads, brass flourishes and tears of joy fresh from my ducts. He’s trying to sample the crowd to create some new percussive layers but the ch-ch-ch-ch he’s instructed us to repeat is coming back in 3 or 4 tempos.

I am sincerely grateful to see this man practice his art again and again. The familiarity with which he visits each of his instruments is at once natural and otherworldly. His performances are joyful, genuine and technically jaw-dropping. If you're a fan, support his mastery and his music by buying a concert ticket and some vinyl.

If you're not a fan, you're fucking up.

Slide into some flip flops and listen to FKJ’s self-titled debut LP. Bumps well with warm breezes, dappled sunlight and a general lack of cares.

♥ Zach