 | | Jas/Chonga
Born and raised in the Long Island region of New York, Jas aka Chonga (aka Phil Jason) was first exposed to music at the age of 6 when he picked up the saxaphone as well as the drums. Never really a very good drummer, he belonged to a rather horrible band throughout high school until he left for Philadelphia where he enrolled in the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. During the pursuit of his degree, Phil was first introduced to dance music through his roomate who eventually persuaded him to take a weekend trip to Twilo, nyc. Being so inspired by his night at Twilo, he was determined to make music of his own. After graduation and a short stint on Wall Street, Phil made the decision to pursue his love for dance music full time. A few months later, Phil, having sent out a few demos, found himself signing tracks to the NYC based Saw Recordings (owned by Satoshi Tomiie) and London based Sumsonic/Mechanism records. At the same time, he began receiving heavy play from DJs such as John Digweed and Chris Fortier. Over the course of the summer of 2001, his tracks saw several appearances on John's Kiss FM show, as well as a spot in his Essential Mix, and found their way onto compilations by the likes of Parks + Wilson, John Creamer/Stephane K and Kasey Taylor. By the end of the summer, he had also signed some tracks to Plastic Fantastic and only a few weeks after that he received word that none other than Deep Dish were interested in some of his material for their Yoshitoshi label. To date, Phil has had tracks signed to Hooj, Saw, Yoshitoshi, Plastic Fantastic, Inversus, Mechanism (Sumsonic), Fade, Chug, and most recently Acute Recordings. | |