carlos peron: dirty songs

Dark Entries is honored to release a 4-track EP by Swiss musician Carlos Perón, founding member of Yello. Carlos was born in 1952 in Zurich and began collecting music at a young age. Inspired after attending a concert of Karlheinz Stockhausen in the 1960s, he began to compose Musique Concrete pieces using a 4-track reel to reel and found sounds. In 1979 Perón founded the trio Yello with musician Boris Blank and vocalist Dieter Meier. Yello released their first album in 1980 and the following year Carlos released his first solo album ‘Impersonator’. In 1983 Carlos left Yello in order to pursue a solo career and released the soundtrack to “Die Schwarze Spinne" and 1984 his second solo album “Nothing Is True; Everything Is Permitted”. In 1988, Belgian label LD Records released a 4-song EP of instrumental tracks from 1984 that predated, influenced and became staples in the New Beat scene. “Dirty Songs” is a collection of songs from Carlos Perón recorded between 1980 and 1986. The recordings were made with the core set up of an ARP 2600, Roland’s Drumatix, TB-303 and TR-808. “Nothing Is True; Everything Is Permitted (Instrumental)” recorded in 1984 is a slow burner with dark, gloomy atmospherics, presented here in an extended version with a bonus intro. The song was inspired by William S. Borroughs’ “Naked Lunch” and paints a bleak futuristic landscape. “Breaking In (Instrumental)”, from 1984, is a crossover of electronic body music and pitched down Chicago acid house featuring overplayed snares by hand though an Ovomaltine Box. Originally featured on the soundtrack for “Die Schwarze Spinne”, the song is about breaking into a large pharmaceutical company to steal drugs. On the B-side is “A Dirty Song (Instrumental)”, originally recorded in 1986 and released by Play It Again Sam in 1988. The song uses one of the earliest Roland SH synthesizers, the SH-1 A, as a solo instrument and is strikingly aggressive with percussive rhythms. “Et” was recorded in 1980 on a 4-track and later and remixed to 8-tracks in 1984 for the “Frigorex” EP, which is where this extended version comes from. Featuring eerie, cut up vocals and Dadaist lyrics by Isa Nogara atop a proto-Techno beat. All songs have been remastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The jacket features a never before seen black and white photo of Carlos taken in 1988. Each album includes an double-­sided postcard featuring the cover art from the “Frigorex” EP. Prepare to make your own movie to the Swiss John Carpenter soundtrack vibes of Carlos Perón.