From kindergarten to Opole, and from Machnów Nowy to SBM Starter. The fifth era of SBM has become a fact and it is for this reason that new players joined the team. It also includes my today’s guest, who is a multi-instrumentalist, producer and vocalist. I invite you to the interview with Bryan, who told a bit about his history with Nobocoto Studio, trends and family connections.
How was it that you got into the SBM Starter action anyway?
I think it was actually my participation in Nobocoto Talents that started appearing in Starter. In addition, a big plus was that I have been a sound engineer at Nobocoto Studio for a year. History shows that the producers of Nobocoto, who also make their own music, sooner or later are invited to Starter. This was the case, e.g. with Kinny Zimmer and Janusz Walczuk. For me, it was just that I got a call that they wanted me in SBM Starter and that I should focus on the numbers that I would like to release there in the near future. Fortunately, I had complete artistic freedom here. My story with Nobocoto, on the other hand, begins when Lazy The Loser, who was the engineer there at the time, invited me to his solo album. He wrote to me on my fanpage on Facebook, and even though I never check it, I went in that day to see if there was anything interesting there. Lazy texted me that he heard my numbers and would like to record something with me. I also started going to his Discord then, we played LOL together, until one day Lazy accused me of being an engineer in Nobocoto. I wasn’t even 18 at the time, so I told him I had to finish school first before I could think about it. Finally, after graduating from high school, I came to Warsaw and became a producer at Nobocoto.
So I take it that this was also associated with the move for you?
Exactly. I come from Machnów Nowy, which is a small town in the Lubelskie Voivodship. A lovely place, but I have a total of about 60 km to the nearest railway station, which is in Zamość. In addition, trains run very rarely from there, so it’s best to go almost 100 km to Jarosław, from which there are definitely more connections. The plus was that every day every 1-2 hours buses ran from my town. It is somewhat extensive, because despite being a village, there are 2 shops, a primary school or orlik, which is, let’s say, a place of youth integration and I spent a lot of time there myself. I just finished primary school in Machnów, and junior high school and technical school in towns 12 and 30 km away respectively. Until the age of 18, I traveled by bus, and after the age of 18, I got my driving license and traveled everywhere by car.
So it’s safe to say that you’ve spent a large part of your life traveling?
Not. It wasn’t until the age of 16/17 that I took up music more seriously. I started playing supports etc. However, such trips to bigger cities like Rzeszów, Lublin, Wrocław or Poznań took place once a month. Since then, you can say that I began to spend an increasing part of my life traveling, but before that, definitely not.
But you’ve been interested in music for much longer. Just the fact that you can play several instruments.
That’s true. I’ve been playing the piano for as long as I can remember and I even remember the day I played it for the first time. I was 6 at the time and in kindergarten. It was late in the middle of the week when my dad brought in an old broken keyboard from the basement. He repaired it in the kitchen at the table, until he finally succeeded and taught me how to play the first notes on it. At that time, I was totally stoned that I was doing something like this, and this instrument made a sound. I perfectly remember the image of the fairy tale “Oh my gosh! Psoty Dudusia Wesołka”, which was playing in the other room. I didn’t know if I’d rather watch a cartoon or play this keyboard, but in the end I decided that I was going to my dad’s kitchen after all.
Did your parents encourage you to pursue musical interests?
I don’t think so. It came super naturally to me. However, in my family, every second person can play an instrument, so when I came into contact with music, I fell in love with it right away. My dad plays the accordion, my mom can sing, and my brothers used to have a band that they played with after weddings. I have six siblings, and while my sisters currently don’t have much in common with music, my brothers still intersect with it somewhere. After weddings, they played something like 20 years ago, where there was no technology at that time that you could play a beat from your laptop and just overdub some instruments. They played everything live and actually I miss concerts played like this at the moment. I hope I will be able to change that in the future. For now, however, I’m focusing more on building a fanbase, and I will play concerts with a DJ for some time. However, in the future, I would like to develop this more. Play with a real live band and only add those Ableton tracks that cannot be played on live instruments.
It would certainly be more difficult with hip-hop stuff, but since you recently mentioned that you are closer to pop than to rap, it would certainly be easier to arrange such songs for live instruments.
There is something about it. In the number “Dreamcatcher” I even say: “I’m closer to Sheeran than Tupac and Diha, but why shut up if it’s still music?” and that’s totally the definition of me. I’m really closer to the work of people like Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran or Charlie Puth, but if I hear a hip-hop beat that I’m really into, I have no problem recording something for it. I used to be very excited about such albums as Monkey’s “A Few Numbers About Something” or Pezet’s “Classical Music”. When I listen to them today, I still get the same shivers as when I first listened to them.
That would be correct, because at the end of 2021 you released the emotional, hip-hop “Vidmø”.
And it’s super funny, because I’ve been a huge fan of Ed Sheeran since 2014/15, and yet there are signs of rap in my work. I don’t know what it’s all about, but it seems to me that hip-hop is deeply rooted in me and allows me to weave more lyricism into it. But I never forced myself to do anything in music. Everything I spent is just my way. However, Mega does not suggest intentional shooting into trends. If, for example, you’ve been doing clubbing all your life, but suddenly you switch to drill because it’s starting to become popular, it’s super unprofessional for me. I’m mainly talking about the underground players I know and see that all they do is try to get into some movement. Maybe it’s a good thing, because they are looking for their own style. However, I have a good intuition when it comes to music and people, and I see that some people do it more for the public than for themselves.
On the other hand, it is worth considering that people are now terribly stimulated by applications such as TikTok. Sometimes they probably even subconsciously copy some treatments that they heard earlier.
That’s true too. It’s hard to deal with it at all at the moment, because in the end everyone is chasing trends to some extent. I, just like some teenage Jan Kowalski, dream that my music will be on top one day. Subconsciously, we somehow shoot into these trends anyway.
However, when you were making numbers for the album “Vidmø”, you probably didn’t really think about sticking to trends. The album was mostly filled with well-balanced, emotional tracks that were more about telling a story than throwing you into a whirl of cosmic views.
This happened because I have been feeling for some time now that trap is slowly overeating in Poland. People need a breath of fresh air and although I didn’t know how to do it myself, I just created what was in my soul. There are very old school, emotional and sung numbers on this album. Only “Samuraj” breaks out of the whole, which was created as the first one for the album. One day a homie just bumped into me and we started freestyling. We recorded one number, and when we wanted to record another, I found the beat for “Samurai”. I started to talk what came to my mind, and suddenly my homie says that it’s super strong and I must release it on my solo album. That’s when I decided it was actually a good time to get down to it.
Earlier, however, you released a few numbers that made several million views on YouTube. You could say it was a romantic rap, which you probably also winked at in the recent “I didn’t like your parents.”
Maybe, although I didn’t mean to be honest. I would like to cut myself off from that lovesong style. Now I’m excited to do more about myself because I have a lot of stories to tell. With “I didn’t like your parents” it was just that I was feeling the number and I really wanted to release it. I went to Jonathan with Miyo one time and told him that I would like to do a guitar ballad. I played the first chords and got really high. We started producing the number and in the meantime I came up with the topline and wrote the lyrics. After the premiere, this number even became a temporary viral on TikTok, where the video with it had almost a million views.
It’s nice to feel so real from you. Sometimes you do a number like “I didn’t like your parents”, other times we hear you on a more pop-club like “Travis”. Let me just remind you that on your debut album you had such guests as Oliver Olson or Zeamsone.
This is a funny story because Oliver Olson is just my cousin. Zeamsone, on the other hand, is a good friend of mine, whom I met a few years ago playing supports for him. At the hotel we freestyled together, which allowed us to catch a nice contact. I have many more such stories, but for now I would not like to draw them all at once. On the one hand, I’m a mega extroverted person who needs a moment to acclimate in a new environment, but then becomes a totally meme type who throws a joke every now and then. On the other hand, I make romantic pop songs, and on the third hand, Oliver Olson is my cousin who once released his music in BOR. This just confirms what I said earlier. In my family, every second person has contact with music, and one of them is Oliver.
Changing the subject a bit, how do you approach the views you make? Do they matter to you or do you try to ignore them?
Still, I think I’m looking at it a bit. It gives me an energetic kick to make the next numbers. When I see that my number, which I was so excited about, made only 10k views, I feel a bit sorry for it for the first few days. Later, however, it turns into motivation, because I always try to turn negatives into positives. I’m starting to figure out what went wrong and draw some conclusions. Thanks to this, I am able to progress day by day. I think that such learning from mistakes is very important in development. This is probably called empiricism, which is based on experience, experiments and observations. It is also important not to do things rashly. Under the influence of the moment and some positive impulse, we feel differently some things that after some time may not suit us at all.
And your inner critic is the one that gets you down or rather allows you to do more?
The one who tells me that I am the best comes up much more often. I don’t mind leaving numbers in a drawer. Each single, immediately after making, I send to my friends and I’m excited that I came out with such a great thing.
And so at the end. What is your biggest dream right now?
One of them I have already fulfilled, which is being where I am. The fact that I have a job as a sound engineer and musician and I can fulfill myself in this. Such my current mundane dream oscillates around peace. So that I could continue to fulfill myself, be healthy and simply have no worries. I strive for such a carefree life so that I don’t have to worry about everyday things and can just do my thing. However, I am a person who, for example, only worries about my health when something happens to me. I’m trying to change that and I even went from being a nightlife brand to being an early riser some time ago. I don’t go to bed at 5am anymore to wake up at 3pm and not know what’s going on. Currently, I try to fall asleep around midnight and get up between 7:30 and 9:00 maximum. This change allowed me to take more slack, because earlier I was a lot worried about the fact that, for example, I sleep irregularly, which may have unpleasant consequences in the future.
A less mundane dream?
I don’t know if it’s even achievable, but I’d love to have a joint number with Ed Sheeran. I think it would be the biggest hit in Poland then.
IG: @01bryan__
photo. 1: @aga_novak
photo. 2 (on the bus) – @alexander.pieńek