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A playfully quiet piano introduces an earthy, ethereal landscape, before textured synths enter the picture, creating a forest of soulful horns and electronic beats. This is Tyber, the latest offering from FKJ, French multi-instrumentalist and producer. This 12-song album made over the course of pivotal years in FKJ’s life features collaborations with Eryn Allen Kane, Lucy Park, Labrinth, Baby Rosa, and more.

Of course, Tyber isn't just a title. During a retreat rooted in Gabon's Bouti tradition, FKJ says he incarnated a handful of beings, with Tyber, a tree, among them, and came away with a new sense of serenity he's been chasing ever since. That experience became the grounding turning point of an album he journaled his way toward, closing out a chapter of his life defined as much by the highs as the lows.

True to form, the record's collaborations weren't engineered, so to speak. FKJ and Labrinth spent an entire studio session just talking before they made any music, and he met Baby Rosa at a party the night before they recorded together. It's a fitting approach for an artist who, when asked to describe his sound in non-genre-coded terms, landed on just two words: positive and optimistic.

Enjoy our chat where we cover who Tyber is, where these collabs came from, and what he'd cook you for dinner if you came over: 

OnesToWatch: Hello. How's it going?

FKJ: Good, good. Just spending the summer in Paris, so it’s really nice.

Are you from Paris originally?

I’m from a town in France, that is maybe an hour from Paris by train. And now I live in the Philippines. I've been in Southeast Asia, and so, it's the first time in six years that, actually, I have a base back home in Paris. It feels great. 

That sounds awesome. I'm thrilled to be talking with you. I love the album. I think it's absolutely beautiful, and I would love for you to tell us: why did you make this album?

So I haven't been yet the type of musician that kind of goes into the studio to make a particular project…with a preconceived idea. I'm more so making music all the time…and then the project kind of reveals itself through different periods of time. There's usually a moment where I'm like, “Okay, stop. This phase of life…comes to an end.” But they usually, all my albums, are kind of like photo albums, a kind of diary that I can look back into.

I don't really know when I started making this album. I think it was probably end of 2022. And then…I knew it was time to close the chapter. I was journaling a lot, and I was writing about similar things, and then it kind of all…ties together.

When you say that you were journaling about the same sorts of things, what was that thing? Is there a specific theme that you're referring to?

When I was starting to make these songs, I actually thought that it was gonna be called "Shift." There were a lot of different changes that were happening in my life around that time, end of 2022…to end of 2023. A lot of things that were sometimes heavy. I didn't know if everything was falling apart, or everything was…how would you say, um…almost like the opposite. 

My life as a musician was doing great. I was on an intense schedule after the release of my previous album. I was touring with this big crew of people, and it was a beautiful experience, but in the back, my personal life was taking a hit with different relationships of very close people around me. 

When things are kind of heavy in your life, I think journaling is, like, the best way to figure things out, for answers. So I'm journaling every day. That's usually the first thing I do in the morning. As I was journaling, things became more more lyrical, like, phrases were coming and kind of transformed into songs. Something happened in 2025. I met, or kind of incarnated, this entity that is called Tyber. And that's kind of what closed this chapter. Everything kind of elevated…everything came together in a beautiful way. It's been beautiful since then. Really beautiful.

Wow! Tell me about this entity. How did you find it, and what is it to you?

It's kind of like…a being. A being that I incarnated.

And this being, I didn’t just dream it, I was helped. You know, I was helped to incarnate it. A very close friend of mine told me about this retreat that he was doing. It's called Iboga. And it's from a kind of an old tradition that comes from Gabon, and it's called the Bouti tradition. I was going there without knowing anything about it. I just went. It's a retreat that lasts a few days, so it’s a lot of introspection before actually taking the plant. But what happened after taking a plant was that I incarnated a few beings, and Tyber was one of them. Most specifically, it's a tree.

It had, like, a level of serenity beyond anything that I ever felt, and, and I just felt almost like a high version of myself. It really gave me a lot of answers, and since that experience, I've looked up to it as an ideal state of being. I can aspire to embody it always in daily life, even if I'm not, you know, I'm not Tyber, I'm not that being. It’s been super helpful since then. 

Seeing the visuals of the album and listening to the music that you make, I can hear this total sparkle of, like, divine inspiration. I want to talk a little bit about when you end up sharing your music, how does this album make you feel? And is that different from what you want the listener to experience?

That's a good question. It's probably different…yes, it’s different because I don't think I hear this music with the same focus point as the listener at all. Like, when you make the music, I think that there's something I want the listener to notice. Details that are probably hidden and buried and very intentional, but it just passes, and maybe if you don't pay attention to it, you don't notice anything. There's a lot of that in my music, I just really enjoy the details. 

But also, I envy the listener, because the listener is able to listen to this music without all the focus point that I have. And so, yes and no. Yes, I kind of want the listener to hear all those little subtleties. And then, I also wish I could hear the music like the listener, without knowing about all the details, and just be looking at the bigger picture.

Do you ever create with the listener in mind, or do you have a way of separating that?

Um, I would love to say no to you, but maybe there's an unconscious part of me that's...you know…I don't think I care a lot about it, but I also remember doing music that I'm very proud of by thinking about the listeners. I think I just love making music. Like, even for this album, I made probably, I don't know, 60 songs, and then 12 made it, and it's just about what makes sense well together.

You've been releasing for so long, I’m curious - have you become more or less critical of your work as time goes on?

I'm not that critical. I don't think I'm that hard on myself. Oh, man, that's difficult to say. Because it's amazing when there's some music that I listen back to, and I'm like, this was okay. And then I hear it in different contexts, and I’m like, Oh, no, actually, this was great. So, I think I'm not too hard on myself. I don't really critique, even if I think after a while, like, Oh, this project wasn't, wasn't as deep as the previous one, or I wasn't as inspired that time – I don't really see it as a big thing to worry about. I'm more like, Okay, next thing. You know. I kind of had to go through this thing to get to the next one. So...yeah, I'm not too hard on myself. I just keep going!

Art is very subjective like that. How can you rank art? You can't. You know?

Yeah. They're just for different people, for different states of mind. 

On that note, I've heard it said that genre classification is just there to help people decide whether they like something before they know it. And I'm curious, using non-genre coded words, how would you describe your sound?

Usually when people ask me what I do, like what music I do, I just say that it's positive, optimistic music. I'm not saying all my songs are optimistic, but usually there's, like, something kind of positive and optimistic. I can't really classify much, because one project to another just changed.There's so many different instruments and eras of my life and in my music. It's like, there's so many influences that you can't necessarily, like, pinpoint them, but I can hear them. There's just so many that you can't really, you can't really pinpoint them. But at the end, I think there's always something kind of sweet, something kind of positive and optimistic, so that's usually what I say.

You have a lot of collaborators on the album, and to me, they all kind of do something entirely different. I'm curious, did you know this album or this project was gonna have a lot of collaborations? 

Yeah, they were very natural happenings. Me and my team, we're not like, “Oh, we gotta reach out to this particular person for your next project, because it would be such a cool collab.” We don't really do that. You know, Bas is a long time friend. And Lucy Park was the same, I was listening to her music a lot in the past 2 years, and we started talking, and then just ended up meeting. Labrinth and I were listening to each other's music also…and then we met during a studio session where we almost didn't do any music, we were just talking the whole time. And then we had to meet again to actually make some music. And then Baby Rosa, I met her at a party, and we both knew each other's music, and we were really happy to meet each other in real life, and then the next day we went to the studio. 

So they all happened very naturally. The track with Eryn is the oldest track, because we made it in 2019. And then I kind of found it again. And then we both heard this song and we were like, This is amazing. We need to finish it. So they're all very organic meetings that happened, and that's what I love, you know. It's just genuine relations and genuine experiences with people.

Let's say family friends are coming over for dinner. What are you making them?

Wow, that really depends...oh, this thing I started making I really love. I'm vegetarian, so it's using haloumi, instead of meat, on some sticks, and you put them in the oven, and you roast sticks with haloumi with vegetables. It's really, really nice, with olive oil around, and then some tandoori spices on top, and then you just let it roast. And something to go with it, like, a nice brown rice.

I’d love to end on your own words. So anything you'd like to say, it can be recommendation, it can be promo, advice…

Okay, cool. I think one thing I really advise people to do – musicians, but also non musicians, and that I've been loving doing recently – is instead of constantly trying to keep track with new music…which is great, by the way. I love that there's so much good music these days…is sometimes just listening to the albums that built you, the albums that made you who you are. Sometimes just stopping a bit from trying to discover new music and just listening back to these albums. For me, it just reminds me who I am, and why I'm making the music I'm making. I've been enjoying a lot these days, just listening to albums that I've grown up with. Sometimes less is more. Cause I’ve been making lots of new music and I’m like, wow, I should’ve done this way earlier. 

Listen to Tyber below: