Felly w/ John-Robert

Flóki Studios sits at the northernmost point of Iceland on a sliver of land abetted on both sides by water. On lucky nights, that water reflects the enchanting Aurora Borealis. Those lights drew Christian Robert Felner, BKA Felly, to Flóki, where he recorded part of his striking new album, Ambroxyde. The title refers to a synthetic molecule found in perfume and the scent memories that carry us from one stage of life into the next. “Ambroxyde is the start of something new being born,” Felly says. He made his name as a rapper and producer, but on Ambroxyde Felly taps into the indie and alternative music that has always soundtracked his life. This isn’t Felly 2.0 – it’s Felly as he has always been, removed from all expectation. “This is the album I’ve always wanted to make,” he says.

Since Felly started releasing music as a teen in 2011, he’s had no problem amassing a fanbase. From the scrappy early recordings he uploaded to SoundCloud and Bandcamp to his most recent EP, 2023’s I had a beautiful time, now I have to leave, the Connecticut-born, LA-based artist has created community around his introspective lyricism and idiosyncratic production choices. In college at USC, he helped form a collective named after the dorm room number, 2273, where he and friends gathered to make music, and it took off. Sampling records evolved into recording live instrumentation and touring with a full band. Over the course of his career, Felly has racked up over one billion streams across all platforms, headlined multiple U.S. headline tours, and collaborated with a wide array of artists, from Carlos Santana to Jack Harlow. Throughout his impressive career, Felly has developed a cult-like following through the raw energy of his live performances, where it wouldn’t be uncommon to find fans boasting tattoos related to his albums. “People have come up to me and shown me tattoos saying this music changed their lives,” Felly says. “Resonating with people in that way is beyond me.”

Ambroxyde contains some of the most personal songs of Felly’s career. “This album revisits some periods of my childhood,” he says. “Songs for the Crows” recounts the premonition of crows appearing on his lawn the day before Felly’s father was diagnosed with cancer. “My dad died when I was a kid, and as the youngest of five, I had to grow up fast.” On “Emmy,” Felly offers a message to his niece and his brother about “the fragility of life, preciousness of youth, the indifference that time holds over us all.”

That indifference drives Felly to create. To make Ambroxyde, Felly chased inspiration outside of his familiar Los Angeles. Accompanied by producer Gianluca Buccellati, he traveled to remote parts of California and far-flung parts of the world. “Luca approaches production holistically. He’ll pick up a project and work with the artist for a long time,” Felly says. In this case, the duo spent over a year on the road together between Felly’s tour dates. “We went to Iceland first where we were really far from the rest of the world and could really tune out any type of influence.” They wrote “Wildfire” inspired in part by the remote, natural beauty of their surroundings. Its chorus blows in like an unanticipated gale-force wind as Felly sings: “Come around like a wildfire/ When my wells run dry/ You fill my desire/ And make it all feel alright.”

Beyond Iceland, they wrote and recorded on the Greek island of Hydra, where cars have been banned since the 1950s and Felly could record at all hours of the night surrounded by crystalline Mediterranean water. There’s a hazy road narrative to be found on Ambroxyde, heard especially on songs like “High on You” and “Route 44,” wherein whole passing days are distilled into a single detail. Felly wrapped the Ambroxyde at the storied Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, TX, alongside a group of eleven musicians, ten of whom he’s worked with on past tours and records. This tightknit group of longtime collaborators weaved the disparate threads of Ambroxyde together over the course of two weeks. Though the pieces of Ambroxyde were recorded across long distances, they converged in post-production. Each song on the album combines takes from the various studios Felly and Buccellati frequented over a transformative year. “As we pieced these songs together, we tried to catch the soul of different places we’d been. On a single song we might take the Greece drums, the Iceland vocals, and the guitars from Sonic Ranch,” Felly says.

That patchwork process contributes to the textural, sensory experience of the album. When Felly talks about Ambroxyde, he tends to speak visually, using words like “dark indigo purple, northern sky at night, sunset” to describe it. The title track opens with the hiss of room tone and a sample of northern Icelandic winds before Felly’s spectral falsetto enters the mix. “See how it goes when I just don’t plan it/ Isn’t it obvious?/ We’re just some particles, yeah/ And the worries they hardly come,” he sings over earthen acoustic production.

“Ambroxyde” is one of a handful of love songs on the album, songs that Felly says are the most earnest of his career.. “I’ve tried to fake love songs in the past, but when you actually fall in love it’s scary, it’s raw, but it’s like coming into the light a little bit when somebody shows you new sides of yourself.” Album opener “Spinning Around” cocoons that terrifying sense of vulnerability. “You showed me who I was/ And it was sweet cause you’re sweet/ I think you’re something I’ll keep,” Felly sings of a love so disarming it threatens to upend him ahead of the psychedelic, electric guitar-led outro.

While Ambroxyde might mark a departure for Felly, he is still operating on a continuum. “This album might put people off who maybe hold me to a certain version of myself. “I’ve got to be honest with where I am, and who I am,” he reflects. That message of preserving authenticity resounds on “Black Shoes,” which has been sitting in Felly’s audio notes for years “just waiting for some context.” That context took time and experience to reveal itself. “I wrote that song when I was feeling wrapped up in a situation that didn’t feel right to me anymore,” he says. “It’s always nice when something you think is dead pokes its head up and takes in the light.” Like that song, this album didn’t emerge from the ether; it is in conversation with past iterations of an artist in a constant state of becoming. “It’s about coming into your being,” Felly says. With Ambroxyde, Felly is closer to his truest self than he’s ever been as he continues to create authentically over vast physical and emotional distances.

John-Robert’s quietly thrilling, intimately earnest songs reflect the young artist’s most salient qualities: He’s reverent, humble and—at the same time—ambitious. His heart-on-sleeve lyrics reflect his journey from small-town boy to big-city singer, songwriter, and producer. And his music, effortlessly flowing from sparse bedroom folk to sweeping modern pop, captures all the vivid emotions that popped up on that road from his tiny Shenandoah Valley, Virginia hometown to his current homebase of Los Angeles. Honesty and vulnerability have kept John-Robert grounded even as his star has risen out west, where he was signed at the age of 19 by the taste-making Ricky Reed, the Grammy-nominated producer and songwriter known for aiding Lizzo’s rise.

“I admire people who are way above my level,” says John-Robert in a characteristic mix of deference and drive. “I’m just trying to hop onto that tier and be one of their contemporaries.”

He’s on his way. From the outside looking in, there’s a sense that John-Robert arrived—in pop, in L.A.—fully formed. Since making his Warner Records/Nice Life debut in May of 2020 with the Bailey Barely Knew Me EP, he’s garnered millions of streams, a handful of remixes, and Instagram love from Camila Cabello for the stripped-down gem “Adeline” alone. He also recorded a breathtaking rendition of Fiona Apple’s “Criminal” for the Recording Academy’s “ReImagined” video series and duetted with alt-pop inspiration Alessia Cara on Ricky Reed’s hypnotically groovy “Fav Boy.” His beyond-his-years depth and thoughtful approach to pop has inspired Reed to call him "a transcendent, once-in-a-generation singer and songwriter.”

John-Robert’s recent “Healthy Baby Boy” is the start of a new chapter that makes good on that cosign. The poignant single reflects on the cycles of life, love, and loss with meticulous close-up detail. A young friend dies while another gives birth, all against the backdrop of our hero waving goodbye to his folks in Edinburg, Virginia, and fighting homesickness and anxiety as he pursues a dream 2,500 miles away. A natural storyteller, John-Robert sonically paints this coming-of-age tale in soft sepia tone before letting it burst into color. The song “sounds like a mystical carnival,” he says. It’s also the sound of his life and music evolving in tandem.

“Healthy Baby Boy” references BB guns and gasoline—when John-Robert wasn’t getting into small-town trouble as a kid, he was making music. He started singing early and got a guitar for his 12th birthday. A troubadour out of time, he’d do both open mics and YouTube covers. By 15, he was learning production on GarageBand, and finding his voice—literally. “I was trying to mimic my favorite vocalists,” he says. Considering that list includes Sufjan Stevens, Doja Cat, Jeff Buckley, and Childish Gambino, “It took a while to find what I sounded like.”

After graduating a year early, John-Robert was granted a scholarship to Berklee School of Music. Instead, he made an early trip to L.A. to work with a different producer. Within a few months, he was back in his parents’ basement, nursing his wounds after a deal failed to materialize. “It got really dark and I felt frustrated and betrayed, like life didn’t owe me anything,” he says. But he found a sense of purpose by returning to what he knew: writing his own story, recording his own music. He vowed to send himself a demo of a new song at the end of each day. “That really kept me going, because I knew that if I didn’t exist, this piece of work wouldn't exist.”

Those pieces became Bailey Barely Knew Me, a chronological document about growing up that also shows John-Robert growing into his sound. It opens with a fingerpicking ballad that spotlights his honeyed croon and Appalachian roots (“Adeline”), and gets bigger and bolder with each track, spanning from silky bedroom-pop to dreamy psychedelia. As he prepares his next release, John-Robert hints at expansion. “The hunt for something musically challenging and expressive in a new way keeps me going,” he says, teasing experimental guitar tunings, “crazy production,” and some intriguing influences (surf-rock, post-punk). But wherever he travels, John-Robert carries his most powerful and grounding asset with him: his songwriting.