Aris Valentino

Before Aris Valentino ever stepped on stage himself, he spent years behind the desk. He produced beats and wrote songs for hip-hop artists, around 200 of them. At some point that wasn’t enough. At the end of 2019 he took his first singing and guitar lessons. In 2020 he founded his own recording studio and label in Mettmann, and that is when it became clear: he didn’t just want to make songs for others, he wanted to be on stage himself.

That drive didn’t come out of nowhere. Aris was born in Oberhausen, lived in Essen and now calls Cologne home. He is the grandson of Greek guest workers and of a Cypriot family that lost everything in the war on Cyprus and started over anyway. From them he learned to keep going. It shaped him in ice hockey, where he made it to the youth national team, on the theatre stage and finally in music.

In 2021 he released his first single, “Showtime”. A year later came the album “Rock is Red”, his answer to “rock is dead”. By the end of 2022 the band was complete, and together they have played more than 50 shows since. WDR Lokalzeit dedicated a feature to him and aired the music video for “Wonda”.

Live is where Aris is most himself: pure energy, with moments in between that suddenly turn quiet and close. At the sold-out “Aris Valentino Show” in Essen he played for almost two hours, with a light show, choreography, an acoustic set and an unannounced aftershow. Add to that stages like Bochum Total, Zeltfestival Ruhr and Kessel-Festival in Stuttgart.

Right now he is working on LIFELINE, his new album. It is a fresh start, fully pop this time. Not a break with the past, but a search for the sound that tells his story best.