Musician You Should Know: Brycon

Photo by Riley Largent

Brycon, the well known of the unknown, is at it again. Last Friday Brycon, San Francisco’s busiest man on the beats, dropped his 13th solo studio album. The Shape of Things That Went which is a 14 track homage to jazz legend Ornette Coleman’s classic album The Shape of Jazz To Come. This album is jazzy and airy in all the right places taking you on a whimsical yet trippy listening journey.

The Shape of Things That Went by @ayejayart photo by @mmbixler.

Gone on the majority of this album are the funky drum loops some have identified with that Brycon sound, found when he collaborates with musicians far and wide. This is not a new concept to Brycon as he treats sounds as physical shapes, placing them into stained glass formations that you hear instead of see, but with light you can still bask in. Enter a fine mix of tempo ranges that blend together nicely for a unique listening experience, think Brycon’s album “Brutalism” which was released in 2020.

Brycon is someone who makes music in their own universe as he puts it “I mean yeah I’m influenced by other hip hop but I just don’t spend a lot of time on that but every now and then I hear something that piques my interest. The whole drumless thing is something I’ve been doing for forever but I never put a label on it. So I want to be like this is a new direction but it’s not really. I’m not taking the earth out from under you but it’s all wrapped in the nostalgia and noir of old sound sources and old influences in like a sort of cinematic feel.”

Photo by Riley Largent

The creative process to Brycon is essentially being holed up somewhere with a portable turntable and searching for something he hasn’t heard before but strikes a familiar feeling. “I’m trying to invoke a place that’s timeless for people but it’s all sort of a guessing game as I envision the end result” speaking on the process for the album. “I’m planting the seeds and trying to think about, well what would this be like when someone eats the fruit. It’s a convoluted and confusing and totally impossible thing but in the end it’s not such a complicated experience for people.”

Photo by Riley Largent

“I wanted things to feel like suspended animation like you’re waiting for a ball to drop that doesn’t. An in between feeling, sometimes that can be unrooting but I also think that it’s also sort of ethereal. If we can experience that on purpose instead of just when it happens that could be cool.”

Maybe it was Brycon’s move from the Mission to the Outer Richmond a year ago that unlocked more than just living space, head space or spaces left to the imagination. Brycon may not have a big reputation for tranquility but he is definitely a fan of it. Just think all of this because he found Ornette Coleman’s phone number rummaging through a bunch of his grandfather’s stuff as a youth. The world is an odd place and Brycon is here for it.

Photo by Riley Largent

You can listen to “The Shape of Things That Went” on Brycon’s Bandcamp page here to support or go stream wherever your streamers fly. Also be on the lookout for a split album with The Architect called Samsonite Survivors: The Real Cost of Life on the Road, as well as a collaboration album with Japan’s iLL Sugi, their 3rd release. Plus projects with the usual suspects Professa Gabel, Monk HTS, MC Pause and Equipto all dropping this summer. Hot damn…told you he was busy, one love.