JAS

In the artist's words:

"Another one who makes music" - that's the maximally catchy, refreshingly self-deprecating slogan that JAS has added to the bio box of his Spotify profile. Anyone who experiences the Berliner-by-choice even fleetingly will quickly realize how well this formula fits his attitude and way of thinking: JAS is a mostly mildly smiling, fundamentally likeable confidence trickster. Someone who never takes things - and especially himself - too seriously, who defines himself solely by his thirst for experience and in no way by success. If he was suspected of doing the latter, he would most likely have taken off over the last few months. JAS has gone straight into the
JAS stormed straight into the German charts with his very first single, gathered over 30,000 TikTok followers in a very short time on his own initiative and needed just three songs to lay the solid foundations for a solo tour worthy of Sold Out. Obviously, JAS is not "just another guy who makes music" - but an exceptional artist whose song lines speak directly from the hearts of thousands and thousands of young people.

In contrast to his sober, detached, surreally grown-up aura, JAS presents himself in his songs as a seeker; as a skeptical-looking doubter who stumbles his way through the world. When JAS - with guitar in hand or sitting at the piano - talks about his voyages of discovery on the emotional rollercoaster, youthful naivety, theatricality, drama and almost unanswerable questions such as "what is forever?" always resonate. In his lyrics, JAS repeatedly deals with the feeling of inner forlornness, with the view into interpersonal abysses, with the search for ways out of emotional dead ends and ditches, with transience and farewell, and not least with death. His pop ballads combine diary-like fragments, the essence of introspective therapy sessions and unsorted mental chaos. They tell - melancholically but never kitschily - of the first big break-up, of moving to the big city, of crazy nights in togetherness. Even if great linguistic images of the "your gaze bundles warmth and starts a forest fire" variety may sometimes distract from this: JAS constantly and exclusively takes up true events and experiences - that is important to him.

If JAS were to tell fictional stories, his swansongs would certainly have less emphasis. Instead, his carrying, daringly swinging voice appears to take up space at all times - both in hymnic, soaring moments and in fragile, whimpering, overheated moments. With an impressive sense of melody and light-hearted, playful timing, JAS occasionally slips into almost endless vocal arcs and multi-tracked, scurrying head-voice choirs. The productions in the background seem just as flexible as JAS' changeable vocal style, moving cinematically through light and dark, threatening and tender phases. Large, sometimes thundering, sometimes shimmering synth pads sound somehow conciliatory even in dark moments. Gentle piano strokes and revolutionary heavy drums lead into surprisingly uplifting, enlightening hooks. The fact is: anyone who creates such great indie pop songs at the age of twenty must have been breathing music for as long as they can remember - and that's what JAS does.

Jasper Riessen - that's JAS's real name - was born in Tübingen in 2004. Music became the focus of his life at an extraordinarily early age: Jasper was introduced to the works of Pink Floyd and Marc Cohn in his parents' living room and received his first drum lessons before he even started school. Inspired by a performance by the Blue Man Group, which Jasper experienced during a family vacation in New York in 2015, he built himself a tubulum in his childhood bedroom. Soon he was traveling across Germany alongside his father - his trunk stuffed with PVC pipes that could be assembled into an oversized percussion instrument - to gain his first experience of performing in pedestrian zones on the tubulum. Inspired by a broad spectrum of contemporary and historical pop music - Jasper attends concerts by Sam Smith, listens to sneezy metal bands and analyzes albums by The 1975 - he soon blossoms as a drummer in indie pop bands. Always surrounded by much older fellow musicians, Jasper got to know the spotlight in this way.

He was seventeen when he graduated from high school, hastily moved from Tübingen to Berlin and went in search of fulfillment. Once again, melodies overshadow his everyday life: Jasper becomes a trainee at a booking agency, takes on bar shifts at the legendary Kreuzberg concert hall Lido and sees a number of concerts. Between the taps and the bass thumping, he gets to know busy music nerds from the Berlin scene - including Alexander Gessner and Stephan Heusser, without whom the JAS project would probably never have become visible in its current form. In the fall of 2023, Jasper uploaded several cover versions of great German and international pop songs to TikTok within a few days, paying tribute to Harry Styles, Blumengarten, Seafret and Ski Aggu. His first own song sketches are soon mixed in with high-class reinterpretations - Jasper's debut, his first ever self-penned song "Winterherz", casts its shadow. At around the same time, Jasper - although his status as an up-and-coming newcomer had long since
had long since manifested itself - began training as a paramedic.

What's happening now is a little surreal: while Jasper starts his shifts every morning at five, his song "Winterherz" (Winter Heart), which he made entirely on his own, goes viral to an almost unrealizable extent, even making it into the German singles charts. Jasper becomes famous in music circles overnight under the alias JAS - training becomes an almost unmanageable additional burden. Towards the end of 2023, the structures professionalize, and less than two months later Jasper releases the second single of his young career, "Straßengraben". When he goes on tour with TJARK in March, he finally decides to hand in his notice to his employer - Jasper's focus is now fully on music. He plans to release his debut EP in late summer 2024, rounding off the first chapter in his artistic career, and his "NICHT NEIN GESAGT" tour will take him to Leipzig, Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart and Cologne in November and December.