Recently we got in touch with Carlos Perón – ex Yello – and he was very willing to help promoting his Electronic activities. As you may know, besides being a musician, Carlos Perón also works worldwide as producer and masteringexpert in different studios.
Note: the Dark Mad festival was announced for October 2022 – but has been cancelled and will be postponed to a new date in 2023.
CARLOS PERÓN is a swiss musician, pioneer of electronic music in the second generation and founder of the band “YELLO”.
Carlos Perón was born in 1952 in Zurich as the son of a marchant and a restaurant owner. His mother was leading the legendary Ristorante Pizzeria Napoli, the first pizzeria on Swiss ground, so only 4 year old Carlos Perón was able to bake his first very own pizza. During his time in kindergarden and primary school he spent a lot of time with sculpturers Otto Müller and Silvio Mattioli in the Künstlerhaus Zürich. From the first grade on, Carlos has been taught to play calssic flute. After he had finished secondary school, he started an apprenticeship as a coffee-merchant.
Musical start
In 1964 he began collecting electronic music. In the 60’s he watched a concert of Karlheinz Stockhausen in Verkehrshaus Luzern. “Zyklus Kommunion” and “Intensität” seemed so awesome to him, that he decided to produce electronic music himself. He began with a Grundig TK24L and recorded laughter, which he showed to all of his teachers on New Year’s Eve. The reactions to this varied very much.
His first Solo LP “Impersonator I” includes several of these “musique concrète” compositions. At the beginning Carlos Perón was keyboarder of the New Wave Formation “Urland” from Zürich, together with drummer Sternini, bassist Ron Styler and guitarist Boris Blank. After the groups’ break up, Perón and Boris Blank founded the TRANCERONIC Studio in Zürich. Within this experimental studio, both of them developed the later Yello-Sound.
Yello
1978 Carlos Perón and Boris Blank travelled to the USA. They visited RCA in Los Angeles and the Ralph Records Label of the resident in San Francisco. After they had returned, Dieter Meier applied as a singer for their formation and could be heard on the incomplete track “IT Splash”. Carlos Perón was convinced, but Boris Blank was sceptic about having a male singer, because he was prefering a female voice. Meanwhile, Carlos Perón got a telegram from Ralph-Records with a luctrative offering for recording the LP. In 1979 the studio moved into the atelier of Dieter Meier‘s “Rote Fabrik” and the trio “Yello” was founded. The first single, including “IT Splash” and “Glue Head” have been released by Perifery Perfume Records Zurich. 1980 the US-Label “Ralph Records” released the first Yello-LP “Solid peasure”.
Solo
1981 Carlos Peróns first Solo-LP was released by the lable “Konkurrenz” in the house of “Phonogram”. There, Yello was offered a major deal through the managing director Louis Spillmann. Within the same year, the Yello-LP “Claro que si” the OST to the movie “Jetzt und Alles” by Dieter Meiner, and the first music video by Yello “The Evening’s young” have been released. 1983 Perón released the OST for the movie “Die schwarze Spinne” by director Mark M. Rissi through the lable “Milan disques”. At the same time the third Yello-LP “You gotta say yes to another excess” was published and was also one of the first CDreleases of the world. 1984 Carlos Perón left Yello to concentrate on several solo-projects and founded the lable “Kristall Sound”. 1985 he released the Oratorium: „Die Schöpfung der Welt; oder 7 Tage Gottes“ on the lable “Milan disques”. He also released the video-soundtrack to the movie “Commando Leopard” by Erwin C. Dietrich over the same lable. It’s said, that Carlos Perón was te first artist, who edited his musicvideo from a movie.
In 1985 he started to work on the Gold-Project, which was released in 1989 via Teldec. In 1988 he started his new Impersonator-Series at the lable “Play it again; Sam” in Brussel. 1990 he composed the music for Harald Schmidts’ TV-Show “Schmidteinander” WDR/ARD and did the soundeffects live for the first three episodes. Schmidt said about Perón: „The most danguerous musican in the word“. From 1991 on he worked with label manager Lothar Gärtner from Strange Ways Records. Perón produced soloalbums for “Strange Ways” and also produced groups as Wolfsheim, Sielwolf, The Cain, Principle, Stalin, Cyrus, Recall and many more as a inhouse producer and mastering expert as well as a publisher. His publishing company EISENBERG édition musicale is allied with Warner/Chappell, Hamburg. Perón also began to compose “Fetish Soundtracks” like “Terminatrix” and “La salle blanche” which showed a new businessmodel to him.
And more
1998 Carlos Perón introduced singer Joachim Witt and Lothar Gärtner to each other. The Idea to produce a single with Peter Heppner of Wolfsheim called “Die Flut” came, when Perón and Gärtner had a fishdinner with lots of white wine at St. Pauli Landungsbrücken. Joachin Witt was great with the idea and started right away.
In 2006/2007 a part of Peróns back catalogue was rereleased by “SPV” wordwide and in 2009 his complete works was released on the digital market. Apart from this, Perón worked with the librettist Osberth McLellan on “Das Musical der “O”, “Die Oper des Saladin” and on his book „Elektroshaman“. With the Berlin Company twelve x twelve Perón worked on NFT Art. He’s in good company there with Till Lindemann from Rammstein.
Perón owns several labels eg DARK DAZE music INC., YellowSunshineBeat, antiK, Schlagober and EISENBERG under the LC No. 05641. Those labels are Worldwide distributed by The Orchard, New York.
Awards
Hammer Schlumpf YELLO Gruppe des Jahres Pop/Rocky 1983 • Doppelplatin für Witt/Heppner Die Flut, Mastering 1999 • aSMus 2008 für Music & Kunst Commercial / TV: Warsteiner • Pfanni • Sachs Bikes • Mercedes Benz • Renault • B/W • Wensauer DDB Needham • 107° • XING • ARD • ZDF • NDR • WDR • SWR • RTL • Sat 1 • Pro 7 • VOX • SR • RAI • Tele5 References as a producer, masteringexpert and executive producer: YELLO • JOACHIM WITT • WOLFSHEIM • SCHMIDTEINANDER • DE/VISION • PFANNI CD COLLECTION • WARSTEINER • WDR • RTL • SAT 1 • SILKE BISCHOFF • AND ONE • 3 SAT • ARD • ZDF • ORF • RED BULL • ROUTE 66 • BLIND PASSENGERS • MESH • BARBARA GOSZA • POWERTRANCEFER • DARK RULER • PETER EHRLICH • RAINER BÄRENSPRUNG • CHRISTINA DREWING • THORSTEN FENSLAU • THE NORMAL • ADY HENRY KISS • NINE-O-NINE • SPIRELLA • B/W • TWILIGHT FETISH MAGAZINE • SRG • TSI • JACK THE RIPPER • DAF • ICON • NITZER EBB • BORGHESIA • FORTRAN 5 • BARRY ADAMSON • IN THE NURSERY • PEEPING TOMS • ARTWORK • GOETHES ERBEN • DAKOTA • PASSION NOIRE • ZOOM TIME • CALLING DEAD RED ROSES • CHRIS AND COSEY • ANTHONY MOORE • MARTIN REV •THE VOODOOISTS • BLACK RAIN • GIRLS UNDER GLASS • BETHA SARASIN & MARCUSE GANZ • FUNDAMENTAL • SNOBS • CHANIDA • MDMA • AMX 40 • SPARTAK • SIELWOLF • THE CAIN PRINCIPLE • THE HEDGEHOGS • MUNIC SYMPHONIC SOUND ORCHESTRA • SWISS SYMPHONIC SOUNDS • LASLO HORTOBAGYI • NEXT GENERATION • SECOND VOICE • BEBORN BETON • LAPASSENKOFF • DIE KNOCHENBRECHER • NEFKOM • SABOTAGE • SULPHUR SKY • biPROG • SEVERED HEADS • OVERGAMENT • LOVE? • EDENFELD • ELEGANT MACHINERY • NEUSTART • THE NORTHERN TERRITORIES • CYRUS • MYNOX LAYH • AUTOMANT 2001 • BRIGADE WERTHER • FETISCH PARK • JOSEPH CHIALO • PRINZ AMAHO • LEX • JULIUS LAHAI • MARVIN BURNETT • MIKE ADAIR • HOUSTON CONTROL • THE IMPERIAL • TERMINATRIX • SCARE CROWS • RECALL • FOOL FOR LOVE • NO REPLAY • WENN DANN • TOUCH EL ARAB • CHARISMA • LEX PURE • IMPERIUM • SATYRIASIS • ISIS • IDEAS FOR IMITATORS • DER KOMTUR • DIE FORM • GITANE DEMONE • ELEKTRODE • SMC • BRANDENBURG • STALIN • THE SPARKS • ROBERT ASHLEY • DER EISENBERG SAMPLER vol. 1-13• REMO PARK • CLAUDE NOBS • FRANK ZAPPA • SUPERSTALIN • FROTTEE BOY • U.R.Q? … etc.
Visit Carlos Perón’s website here. Or look at his site for mastering.