Boris Blank, de creatieve motor achter de Zwitserse electronica band Yello, vertelt het ontstaan van zijn muzikale werkwijze en het ontstaan van het nummer 'Oh Yeah'. Een interview uit 2015.
Yello albums have some of the finest production quality I've ever listened to and Boris Blank should be lauded for that. I had the pleasure of meeting Dieter Meier at an album signing at HMV in Manchester. Not many bands can truly be called "influential" but Yello are one of them.
Agreed, Yello always sounds perfect from the low bass to the highest high. If you want to impress someone with your sound system then just demo them some Yello!
Yeah most of their songs are deceptively simple but you can tell they do an endless amount of meticulous tinkering to make sure every individual sound and then the overall mix is exactly the way they want it. You can tell when he's talking about reverb and echoes and different recording spaces how much time he's spent thinking about and experimenting with sound.
The mastering on ALL their albums is incredible. This guy should own *all* the awards. Hell, even DJ Tennis played a long version of La Habanera at the Panther Room (Output) a couple of years back.
I met a man when I worked in Switzerland in 1990 that knew Boris and he said he wasn't really a proficient musician by any standard but created sounds on the fly. I always wondered if this was true, 30 years later this is confirmed by Boris himself. Well done Boris, you are one creative genius 🙂
1982 I heard "Bostich" for the first time and was immediately flashed. Wow! What a track! Boris is a genius. "Live at the Roxy" is one of my vinyl treasures. And I absolutely love "Ciel Ouvert"!
@@ChilliCheezdog _"Oh, he's very popular, Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude."_
Came in to a store to buy some new speakers back in the mid 90’s The sales guy played ”Jungle Bill” to demonstrate the speakers capability. I did not buy the speakers, but i went straight to the store and bought the record Essential Yello. I played it to obliteration. I actually had to buy it a second time after 6-7 years. Haha still have it.
I got into these two geniuses in about 1982 when BBC Radio 1 DJ David "Kid" Jensen played their masterpiece single "I love you" on his evening show. Loved them ever single. I recommend the album "The new mix in one go" along with all their earlier stuff.
Well that was an interesting interview!! I've been listening to Yello for 30 years....and I've always thought they were German....but here we are, they are Swiss!!! I have many of their CDs. These guys are just so awesome. If people don't know, Yello consists of two wealthy guys that make music that they like, with no control from music labels. The result is very unusual uncontrollable music!!
Oh Yeah is the perfect soundscape, that's for sure. I have a lot of Yello Albums and listen to them once in awhile, enjoying them, really loving Tiger Dust, or Si Senor, the hairy grill… and so many others, but when O Yeah comes along, it sure is something special. Every time.
Thank you Yello for being there through my own transition period....being uncool back then for liking music like Yello. Then thirty years later as a dj to currently hosting 2 radio shows and years throughout radio.... to being respected today for liking Yello as a trail blazer. Great role models, teachers and visionaries.
That was the first album I bought by them! I was looking for You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess (for Heavy Whispers in particular) but my local record store only had a couple of copies of Stella. I was like, "Hey, why not?" and bought it (this was before Ferris Bueller). It's been one of my favorites ever since.
Always been a fairly ignored but great band. I couldn't believe it when I heard Oh Yeah on Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I liked that he had a Caberet Voltaire poster on his wall too. Ferris had good taste.
As soon as you put on a Yello CD, the crystalline quality of the soundscape hits. Very few artists get this, especially those keen on lofi. 10CC had a similar quality, if you were concerned that your needle was dirty or worn when playing vinyl, either Yello or 10 CC would give you a reference. My old system, a pair of Quad 11 monobloc amps with 57ESL speakers picked holes in most recordings, now many systems are that good.
Genius. Was already into Kraftwerk, JMJ, Art of Noise and early electronic, but these guys had a unique thing going on. Had every album on tape and a couple of vinyls. Very cinematic, avante garde, experimental, funny, whacky, compelling, inventive, with a Euro chic. Didn’t know anyone else who was into them haha
Great interview. Yello are cult! Like art on some sort of sonic canvas. One of the best things coming from Switzerland. Even better than cheese, chocolate and watches ;-)
I was listening to these guys with Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Tones on Tail, Shriekback and others long before I heard their song in Ferris Bueller. Love it. Thanks for the music!
Actually, it was used *twice* in the movie: The first time when he drove his hot aunt to her house, the second time when he, his girlfriend, his aunt, and his uncle were all sneaking around the house at night. Talk about squeezing maximum mileage from one song.
"Leave the jungle of the Amazonas full of piranhas... and follow... Father Excess... ..." "Yello Live at the Roxy" was the first track I heard from them, and I was obsessed with finding it (in 1984 - back when it was often HARD to find music) and buying it, but it was "Great Mission/Another Excess" that took my preconceptions about what music sounded like and what it represented, and threw them into the sun. Yello forever.
I occasionally forget how forty years ago they achieved the position of being incredibly sophisticated and futuristic at the same time - as a kid in a coal dirty area of England, it was an incredible, and forty years later, timeless and unique sound.
One of my all-time favorite bands. I lived in Germany in the mid-80s and walked into my favorite little record shop and bought New Mix In One Go one day because of the cool-looking fingerpainting cover .. WOW .. never heard anything like it. Of course ... I'm lying.
Yello are my favourite of all time and the unsung hero's of electronic music. Originators. Listen and you'll find every kind of music. They deserve more recognition. If you don't know Yello, know Yello. Bostich.... 1980.... house music..... long after. Nuff said. 😍
I love how far Yello has reached. In the 1990's, there was a sketch comedy show on Fox TV here is the U.S called "The Edge". They used a re-recorded instrumental version of "Si Señor, The Hairy Grill" as their opening theme song.
I've been listening to JMJ since I was 8 years old, and listening to Yello since I was 10, and listening to Kraftwerk since I was 11. But I don't know who Giorgio Moroder is, sorry.
Great video. I first heard Yello thanks to movies like Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Secret of My Success, but it wasn't until many years later that I could truly appreciate the music of Yello thanks to a good friend. This friend also shared the knowledge that the Manga Entertainment dub of the anime Space Adventure Cobra: The Movie featured a Yello score. Which very much makes it the best dub out there.
I have always wandered how the song came about. When I ask people, have you heard of Yello? Most would say no. I then say, yeah you have. Puts on Oh Yeah. Yes, I have heard it before. Well that's Yello 😊
Would LOVE to hear the (so I've been told) album and a half worth of unreleased tracks done with the Voice of Velvet... Billy MacKenzie. apparently to painful for Boris to go back to :(
My introduction to Yello was via Kraftwerks. I was at a car show in 1983, and Numbers was playing on a high end car stereo demonstration. I made a mad rush to Tower Records to get Computer World, and came across You Gotta Say Yes in the same section. When I got home and dropped the needle... Saweeeet heaven on Earth, my cup runneth over.
Wonderfull music I still like to listen to it. Once infected undetected in the 1980s. This is thanks to a large local disco (The Box in Arnhem) where music by Yello was often played During a spectacular laser and light show for that time.
Always been a fan since '82. Bought all their records. Love the cinematic atmosphere of The solid pleasure, Claro que si and You gotta say yes to another excess albums . But always had a slight penchant for the more discoesque Stella album (Desire and Vicious games song). Their whole discography has always been ahead of their time. As someone said in comments, Yello is underated despite the fact of their influence and creativity on the electronica genre. Great upload, thanks for the share as they were always very privy about their life. Fun to hear Boris.
Another great great SUPER GREAT documentary on this genre is (I forget the name of the docus) but it's on the group YAZOO , very interesting and like this one informative into the music we LOVE and grew up listening and DANCING TO.
Yello are not so much musicians as sound sculptors. Love the vast spatial sound of their tracks. In the early 80s I was into both punk and electronic but the two rarely mixed. I first heard "Domingo" on a mix tape and my jaw dropped: I had to know who composed that piece! Needless to say I was hooked and still am!
Heerlijke aparte muziek Ik luister er nog steeds graag na. Ooit in de jaren 80 ongemerkt mee besmet geraakt. Dit dankzij een grote lokale discotheek (The Box in Arnhem) waar vaak muziek van Yello werdt gebruik om een voor die tijd spectaculaire lazer lichtshow te ondersteunen die hier volledig op geprogrammeerd werd Dit was tevens het hoogtepunt van de avond rond een uur of 11. Pas veel later kwam ik erachter dat dit muziek van Yello was nadat ze een radiohit scoorden met The Race.
@ Yep, in the 80s and 90s I saw several mini-documentaries on pop magazine shows, showing Dieter Meier being flamboyant and rich and eccentric and talkative ... and the interviewer mentioning as an aside that "Boris Blank speaks no english, so lets Dieter do the talking".
I love their new album. I listen to it on Tidal in Dolby Atmos Music. The fidelity is incredible. It is like my headphones are directly connected to Boris's Apple Mac Pro.
Actually the first time I heard the song (Oh Yeah) was around 2002 or 2003. It was in a Danish TV commercial for the oil company Hydro Texaco. Back then I didn't know the band (Yello) and the song. I think in the same year, I saw the movie (Ferris Bueller's day off) on TV, and I heard the song again in the movie. Then I got curious and tried to look up for the song in the movie soundtrack, and I finally found the song and the band. Since then I have become a fan of the band. My personal favorite songs of the band are: OH Yeah The Race Gold Rush
