Carlos Perón

Carlos Perón (born 1952 in Zürich [ [http://www.lastfm.se/music/Carlos+Peron Carlos Peron – Musik på Last.fm ] ] , Switzerland) is a Swiss [ [http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/syltguides/fullview/2WT2EZGLOJWL0 Amazon.com: "know all about the Swiss band Yello" ] ] musician, and was a founding member of the band Yello [ [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0674410/bio Carlos Peron - Biography ] ] [ [http://www.discogs.com/artist/Carlos+Peron Carlos Peron ] ] . [http://www.xmission.com/pub/lists/yello/archive/yello.9708] .From the first primary class on he had classical flute lessons. After finishing secondary school he trained to become a coffee businessman. The first sound Carlos Perón ever recognized in his life was the noise of a telephone dial selector and the song O sole mio by famous opera singer Enrico Caruso. In 1964 he started to collect electronic music as a collector. In the 60s he saw a concert by the famous composer Karlheinz Stockhausen at the Verkehrshaus in Lucerne. The cycle ‘Kommunion und Intensität’ (Communion and Intensity) influenced Carlos so much that he started his own electronic music concept. He started with a Grundig TK24L to record noise pictures and laughing orgies. His first solo album ‘Impersonator I’ is full of these musique concrète trifles.

Carlos Perón started as a keyboard player in the new wave band URLAND in Zürich. He played with drummer Sternini, bass player Ron Styler and guitarist Boris Blank. After the split of the band Carlos founded the TRANCEONIC studio in Zürich together with Boris Blank. In this experimental studio the two developed what would later on become the famous Yello sound. In 1978 Carlos Perón and Boris Blank made a trip to USA to sell their music to the US music industry. They visited RCA in Los Angeles and The Residents in San Francisco. After returning to Switzerland Dieter Meier showed up and sung on a demo. Carlos was euphoric, but Boris was skeptical - he would rather have a female singer. In 1979 the studio moved to Dieter Meier's atelier at the Rote Fabrik, and later on the trio Yello was founded. Also the first maxi single of Yello came out (with ‘I.T. Splash’ and ‘Glue Head’) on the local label Periphery Perfume. In 1980 Yello rejected a record contract offered by Klaus Schulze; they preferred a contract with Ralph Records in San Francisco owned by the Residents, and they released their first Yello album Solid Pleasure. In 1981 Carlos released his first solo album Impersonator I on the label Konkurrenz/Phonogram, and Yello got a long term major deal on Phonogram through the managing director Louis Spillmann. In the same year the Yello album Claro Que Si came out, and also Yello’s first video (to the track The Evening’s Young). In 1983 Carlos released the soundtrack to the film Die Schwarze Spinne by director Mark M. Rissi on the label Milan Disques. The same year Yello issued their third LP You Gotta Say Yes To Another Excess.

In 1984 Carlos left Yello in order to pursue a solo career, and he founded the label Kristall Sound. In 1985 he released his first oratorio ‘Die Schöpfung der Welt; oder 7 Tage Gottes’, again on Milan Disques. On the same label he published the video soundtrack to the war movie ‘Commando Leopard’ by famous producer Erwin C. Dietrich – thus Carlos was the first one who extracted a music video from a motion picture in order to promote it. In the USA Carlos got the first McDonalds campaign. From 1985 on he developed the “Gold” project which was finally sold to TELDEC worldwide. In 1988 he started the Impersonator series on the label “Play It Again, Sam” in Brussels. In 1990 he composed the music for German comedian Harald Schmidt for his show Schmidteinander and he also acted in three episodes of the show. From 1991 on he worked with label owner Lothar Gärtner of Strange Ways Records; he produced solo works and also bands like Wolfsheim, Sielwolf, The Cain Principle, Stalin, Cyrus, Recall and many others. In this phase he created the so called fetish soundtracks like Terminatrix and La salle blanche. In 1998 he brought the forgotten singer/songwriter Joachim Witt to Lothar Gärtner. Carlos and Lothar Gärtner then got the idea to produce a single with the singer Peter Heppner of Wolfsheim called Die Flut. From 2006 on the music company SPV began to re-release Carlos’ entire solo works on Revisited Records worldwide. He also works independently with opera librettist Osberth LcLellan on ‘Das Musical der >>0<<’, ‘Die Oper des Saladin’ etc. Carlos is nowadays working worldwide as a music producer.

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