November 2018: 15-year-old Helena sings AnnenMayKantereit songs with an acoustic guitar in the snow at Munich's Stachus. She has just finished secondary school, but her life has some difficult tests in store. An apprenticeship at HieberLindberg Musicstore has fallen through but she urgently needs a good plan or money, or both. In a Hollywood movie, someone would stop in the snow and offer Helena the chance to record a demo. Perhaps he would pass this demo on to a music foundation. And in this foundation there would be a woman who, after a few minutes, would throw the foundation plan overboard and offer to finance young Helena's studies at jazz school instead of the planned promotional CDs. And Helena would accept and finally do what she always wanted to do: study drums. Five years have passed since then, Helena Niederstraßer has now graduated from the Jazz School (“state-approved ensemble leader”) and plays drums for up-and-coming newcomers, including ENNIO. Before that, she spent six months playing street music throughout Europe.

As “VANDALISBIN” (Vandalism + Lesbian) she writes songs, programmatically in the field of tension between queer sexuality, love, violence and self-empowerment.

The trials and tribulations of her young life are impressively reflected in it, as in a lucid play of shadows in the cleaning light of an unknown club. Raw and oppressively beautiful poetry, inspired by contemporary rap and timeless classics such as Hildegard Knef, Nina Simone and Rio Reiser. Performed in her unmistakable voice, which sounds as if Helena has the soul of a 50-year-old bouncer in her throat.

She unerringly delivers poetic images and hooks, punchlines in the truest sense of the word. She delicately balances her diverse influences from Eryka Badu, Nirvana, Bilderbuch and Isolation Berlin to create a spiky neo-soul, with a blues note in the performance and plenty of wit between the lines. Whether on piano, guitar, bass or drums: the 21-year-old writes her observations from her soul in a way that mesmerizes. Perhaps also because as a human being you instinctively recognize when experiences are shared and not just made up stories. “Based on a true story” is the working title of her first album.