Nicknamed "Briski" by his father (pronounced Bri-skee), Brian Bejarano worked beyond a casual encounter with sound in Dallas, England, and San Francisco, taking a deep dive into the dark pool of music to feed the emotional, soulful and spastic sides of his adult nature. His young journeys drew him to throw and attend undergrounds and house parties; to buy and listen to psychedelic rock jams and Wicked tracks (beginning with Jeno, Garth, Thomas, Markie and Doc Martin; all bearing an indelible imprint on him); to scoop old-school tapes of '90s mixes that hoisted the shimmy at his smaller shindigs as he rounded out his sound.

But Bejarano’s desires propelled him headlong into every aspect of the business: DJing, producing and promoting. As a DJ, he established a residency at Dallas’s Velvet Hookah, was a part of his own re:body project that threw shimmery and artful disco parties all over San Francisco, and finally became a resident of West Coast collective, As You Like It. In the promotion sphere, he promoted and played an assortment of disco and house parties in Dallas that included guests like Doc Martin and Egyptian Lover. He also rocked sensational SF parties including Art Department and Linkwood at the now defunct wilderness-preserve-turned-sound-hive, the Compound, to fill the void of genres being spotlighted by the venue at the time.

Fast-forward to 2011’s tail end/2012’s cusp, his focus shifted more to sound development, production and travel (in both North America and abroad). The young rebel-turned-analyst had nurtured his reckless anima into a captivating concentration of musical mandates, resulting in awesome creative tangents previously unimagined.

"Dance music is always changing, with everything," he says. “We're all in our own worlds, and this music is where it all collaborates. It allows us to drop our problems and commune like our more tribal selves. As things keep changing, the movement in the scene has such a fresh, intellectual and international bent to it that it lets us express some things that words can't. It is a good spirit, and it can get twisted with distractions, but it encompasses the open-ended love of young and old, classic and momentous. It is the incredible vehicle of our passions or the prison that thwarts us."

"What I'd prefer it be," he continues, "is for the music to be an ability to go deep into the woods--our ways of telling the story in those light to darker tones, where even hostility cuts not as deep as an insult, but drives us toward a soft place where we see our nature and tell a story about it. I try to create a space where driving moods in a charismatic fashion is welcome; piecing the ups and downs askew in a way that cuts through the bullshit. An antithesis to perfection, it pushes you through to a new realm, deep into frozen, treacherous areas to reactivate them."

"It’s the rush" he says. "So let's party.”

-Roxanne Tomco

ailen