Alejo Parella

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Alejo Parella
New Order as depicted in the sleeve of their 1985 album Low-Life. Clockwise from top left: Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner, Gillian Gilbert, Stephen Morris.
New Order as depicted in the sleeve of their 1985 album Low-Life. Clockwise from top left: Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner, Gillian Gilbert, Stephen Morris.
Background information
Origin Argentina Buenos Aires, Argentina
Genre(s) Post-Punk
Alternative Rock
Years active 1995-present
Label(s) Retroforward
Associated
acts		 almanso
Glasnost

Alejo Parella (born May 25, 1976) is a musician, singer and composer from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He started developing his musical skills since age 4, playing on his family's piano. From then on he started writing music as he was learning from his father Luis Terreil, who has been playing piano and trombone since late 1950s on several traditional jazz bands like New Orleans Stompers, Dixiebanda and Portena Jazz Band. All this technical knowdledge and music envolvement since his childhood days was added to his natural born musical ear, which helped him a lot to play on his piano whatever he heard on radio, records, TV, etc.

His first compositions started to appear when he was 8, with a varied mix of influences coming from different sources. French pianist Richard Clayderman (from TV), dixieland jazz (from his father), Spanish melodic singers like Joan Manuel Serrat, Julio Iglesias and Jose Luis Perales (his mother's favourites) and the whole early 1980s pop new wave (from his teenage sister). At that time he would, for example, play Beethoven, Louis Armstrong or The Cure in a row, followed by his own songs influenced by all these great artists.

On primary school he defined his main musical taste with pop, rock and electronic music coming from England's new wave. The Cure, Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Police, Talk Talk, Depeche Mode and especially New Order. He became a big fan of the band from Manchester; and still is.

He started forming his first musical projects, with his constant friend Juan Bazan, during the 1980s. Travels to Brazil once a year made him very curious also about Brazilian rock. Bands like Paralamas Do Sucesso, Legião Urbana, Kid Abelha, RPM, and others, attracted his attention.

He began secondary school, and his musical taste found in bossa nova a new way to express all his feelings into music. He started buying records from Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinicius de Moraes, Toquinho, Chico Buarque, João Gilberto and many more. He also found other young people with similar tastes and in 1995 he finally formed the band almanso, with Juan Bazan on piano and Sebastian Gomez on bass. He started learning guitar to be able to expand his musical expression, so he took care of guitars and vocals.

Soon after Gomez left the band and they called guitarist Pablo de Speluzzi to join them. On this period the band was known as Fruto del Hastio, and they were able to mix all those influences in interesting and complex pieces of music. After several months working on this they decided to go separate ways and de Speluzzi left the band. Parella and Bazan continued as a duo and they went back to the name almanso. On April 1996 they performed their first two live shows in Natalio Ruiz Pub playing own songs and cover versions of New Order, The Cure, Simple Minds, Sting, Antonio Carlos Jobim, etc.

Various musicians were part of almanso during the following years but Parella and Bazan never found the ideal complement for their nucleus. They even recorded a 3-song demo in 1997 (Una Vuelta Entera, Sin Ayer and Puedo, all written in the Fruto Del Hastio days) with Sebastian Bianchini on bass and Claudio Maxit on drums. But musical and university studies took too much time. That added to the apathy of not being able to express themselves in the way they expected made them stop for a couple of years.

On 2000 they started playing together again, as always Parella writing the songs and Bazan giving the proper arrangements. They sounded fresh and every day more focused on a pop/rock style and far away from the fusion and experimentation of Fruto Del Hastio. They started 2001 thinking about forming a 5 piece-member band to play a number of concerts that year. So they called Santiago Diaz on guitars, Gaspar Porto on bass and Francisco Sanchez on drums. They rehearsed hard for a couple of months and played on Saint's Bar in March. Unfortunately some personal and musical problems made them dissolve the band once more. Later that year they called Sebastian Gomez again and keeping Santiago Diaz they tried to continue with the original idea of playing many live concerts. But unexpectedly Juan Bazan left the band to concentrate on his musical studies. So Alejo Parella decided to continue alone as a solo artist under the name almanso in 2002.

Year 2003 started with his first solo appearance on a New Order tribute concert organized by the band Final Feliz. He decided to play some acoustic versions of New Order and related bands all time classics and he recorded those renditions. Then he decided to make them circulate on NewOrderOnline.com, the biggest New Order fan site of the world. One of its members, Michael Nguyen, became very excited about one of these songs (Ceremony) and started thinking about a worldwide tribute. They started developing the idea and asked NewOrderOnline's webmaster Nicolas LeBlanc if they could use the site as the plattform and he said yes. So the three of them organized a contest where artists from all over the world sent their covers of New Order and related bands. NewOrderOnline members chose 16 of them and finally "" was edited on June 2004. almanso came 4th with his rendition of Angel Dust. The three producers also decided to edit an EP with leftovers, songs that they thought they should be edited and weren't chosen by the members. So the acoustic version of Ceremony was also included as a prize for being the seed of the Community project. Also a remix of Angel Dust was made by another contestant Project Wintermute and also was released on the EP.

During that period Alejo Parella became friend with a Greek contestant Sophia Doskori (her band at that time The Minus One also was edited on Community). They decided to create a project through the internet called Nemesis. As Community was made entirely over the web they thought it would be a good idea to continue with that international spirit. Their first work together was a cover version of New Order's Crystal that was also edited on the Community EP. On August Sophia and her boyfriend Elias Melissas traveled to Buenos Aires so that was a perfect occasion for them to play together. Alejo Parella organized the "Buenos Aires Community Tribute Party" and they played together with the bands Crisalida, MHz and almanso (as a solo artist) all playing own songs and cover versions of New Order tracks. They played Vanishing Point, Crystal and 2 Nemesis songs Madness and False. That was the beginning of a new musical project for Alejo Parella.

During 2004 and 2005 they have been recording demos with C Bentley as producer, another artist included on the Community album and producer of the Community EP. They changed their name to Glasnost, as Nemesis was already taken by a number of artists from all over the world. Glasnost's first album is expected for 2007.

In 2006, almanso won a spot on the 2nd tribute album from NewOrderOnline.com with a ska version of Joy Division's New Dawn Fades featured on Community 2: A NewOrderOnline Tribute.

[edit] Discography

[edit] External links

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