YELLO: CLASSIC/DUD; SEARCH& DESTROY

so much more than the well known oh yeah/the race tracks.

I tend to be prejudiced against 80s electro artists who keep on into the 90s and beyond, which is pig-headed of me, I guess. I am very familiar with their early work and unfamiliar with their 1990s+ work. Does any of it have that satisfying edge that the earlier stuff does? I wonder what does "Yello-like" mean, it seems they do a ludicrous variety of styles.

12 albums on SPOTIFY!
.. check out One Second and Essential.

Touch Yello is in no way ground-breaking but really fantastic, in an '80s late-night American B-grade saxophones-and-stockings detective drama kind of way.

An amazing interview if you haven't seen it:
3 part Yello Story from Snub tv circa 89/90.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_598zDn4DM

ooh brilliant, cheers, I'll get onto that.

Dieter Meier has the same birthday as me! mind totally blown.

These guys had a car???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag_eUk97WNE

oh oh oh get "To the Sea"!! I know it's on the Danny Tenaglia "Back to Mine" comp. It's one of the most... wistful songs I've ever heard; well-sung; a scatter-gun ferocity to the drums. It's not exactly "analogue" but it's very very good.
― Tracer Hand, Friday, January 11, 2002 11:00 AM (9 years ago)

yesss this song is lovely

Can't stop playing this from Trevor Jackson's Metal Dance comp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLyfq72rkCU

so unfairly ignored these guys. i mean, even on ilx; a C or D thread with barely 50 posts in 10 years!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5rNJjZq8Qo

A while I ago I acquired the "Rubberbandman" single, which has the ridiculously fun extended remix of the tune, as well as a Derrick May remix of "The Race". That one's well worth looking up.

Oh shit, I found a hilarious Yello clip on Youtube!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5cKf9Tc2HM

Based on this, Boris Blank might've had a bright future ahead of him in physical comedy.

Speaking of "Dr. Van Steiner", everyone should check out the Cosmic Baby remix of that tune (from the Hands on Yello remix comp that came out in 1995). It adds some extra narration by Dieter Meier that was cut from the original version, and in general makes a semi-forgettable album track into a dance pop gem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KdIoNrdoV0

a semi-forgettable album track

!?! one of my fave yello tracks.

[i def prefer the orig to this remix .. ]

and yes, following this bump i think its time i picked up the remastered editions as this is indeed a band that never failed to impress me back in the day.

Maybe "semi-forgettable" is a bad term, but what I meant is that the album version tries its best to make a potentially awesome tune lesser than it is by burying Rush Winters' vocals too deep in the mix, repeating the chorus only a couple of times, adding a pointless guitar bit, etc. The remix corrects all that, emphasizes the evocative beauty of the vocals in the tune, plus adds that cool cut narration by Meier.

Anyway, the Hand on Yello comp is well worth checking out for other good Yello remixes too, including ones by The Grid, Carl Graig, and Westbam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igIvnRt4gtw

The Orb also has a pretty epic remix of "You Gotta Say Yes To Another Excess"/"Great Mission" on it that uses little from the original, except for an elephant cry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TVfokLE15A

The full length 13 minute version of the race blew my 14 year old mind when it came out in '88, and still doesn't sound dated to my ears.

the double whammy of 'great mission'/'you gotta say yes to another excess' is pure perfection.

never did get any of the remasters.

may have to check the racks over the next few weeks as my vinyl copy of 'stella' has seen better days, and i would love to hear it in full quality.

did anyone pick up the boris blank 2cd set of his solo material ?

full 6 cd set of the remasters : £20.

yes please.

have not seen many shops with the full set in stock for a long long time, so wasn't going to miss the opportunity.

bloody hell i am enjoying these.
thought i had never heard the bands first two albums, yet its clear i know them well.
suspect i borrowed them from a local library and recorded them onto a cassette.
what a bastard i was.

in other news : yello + insanely OTT guitars = perfection.
'si senor the hairy grill' : as insane as anything by ministry.

best £20 i have spent in a long long time.

are these the remasters from 10(?) years back?

yup. all remastered by boris.
all numbered.
hence the OCD collector groove kicked in.
no way could i buy 1/3/6 !!
was always a case of all or nothing.
hence the happy groove, as i have not seen a complete set since their original release.
guess vertigo/mercury have repressed them and so there is a new spate of them on the racks.
i care not.
just well chuffed to have the complete set as they confirm my opinion that YELLO were absolutely brilliant.

ok, i have resisted the urge to splurge on this thread over the holiday season, but the fact is YELLO is clearly one of the best electronic pop bands ever.

so many hidden classics before they hit their commercial groove.

eg. 'ballet mecanique' : yes, there is a cheesy filled reggae fill in, but this is brilliantly counteracted with the psycho vocal that hits after a few loops.

this is what i love about yello : while using the sonic limitations of the day, they still embraced the elusive spanner of the works that rarely got love.

summary : they were clearly fucking nuts, and i love that.

and they are back.
all the berlin shows are sold out.
and i am unable to get the new vevo hosted video, limbo, (any connection to their brilliant track, bimbo, i wonder !) to play.
ahh.

pr re new album, TOY :

Like all great Yello records, Toy is playful, super-sharp and ultra-modern; something akin to a set of vivid snapshots of a utopian futurist Europe rendered in glorious techno-colour. Taking in joyous liquid electronics (on first single Limbo, Tool Of Love), continental torch songs (Starlight Scene, Dark Side), glimmering Balearic sunset music (Blue Biscuit) and myriad points in between, Toy is the unmistakable sound of Dieter Meier and Boris Blank gleefully working at the top of their game after nearly four decades making music together.

Recorded at Yello Studio, Zurich, Toy features guests Fifi Rong (vocals on Kiss the Cloud, Dark Side) Malia (vocals on Cold Flame, Starlight Scene, Give You The World) Heidi Happy (vocals on Dialectical Kid), Jeremy Baer (all guitars).

Yello are Dieter Meier and Boris Blank. Their first LP - Solid Pleasure - was released in 1980. Since then, they have forged a unique career that’s influenced everything from techno culture and hip hop to the Simpsons. Yello recently announced their first ever full live shows in their thirty-seven year career. They will play songs from Toy and ‘reloaded classics’ over four nights in a decommissioned German power station – KraftwerkBerlin – between October 26th and 30th. Each of the four gigs sold out within two days of going on sale.

Tracklisting: Frautonium Intro / Limbo / 30,000 Days / Cold Flame / Kiss The Cloud / Pacific AM / Starlight Scene / Give You The World / Tool of Love / Dialectical Kid / Dark Side / Blue Biscuit / Magma / Frautonium

Toy is the unmistakable sound of Dieter Meier and Boris Blank gleefully working at the top of their game after nearly four decades making music together.

it's basically the last three albums all over again, so yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA-wKK3azN4

looks excellent.

yes, this looks fantastic.
there was a very positive review of the show in the new mojo, according to which, this was the encore.
should have been the full 12+ version.

that is the best i've ever seen a 'pop video' look, on a backdrop at a gig. coincidentally we were bellyaching on some thread or other, about how bad promos of the 80s and 90s look now on YouTube and how they never seem to come out in HD or Blu-Ray but somehow theirs look amazing up there.

i suspect thats down to boris.
he is all about the visual representation these days with his love of movie scores etc.
even in the early days, these guys had access to serious tech toys.

Boris? Dieter was a visual artist before he became a vocalist and he's directed all of Yello's videos (and famously worked for years on a stage musical based on their music that was never properly finished), so presumably he's the one who puts more effort into the stage visuals too?

The Dieter-directed "Virtual Concert" DVD that came with Touch Yello is pretty great too, if you don't mind the cheap looking CGI effects. (Which I'm willing to forgive because the budget must've been fairly small.) The bit where they place those white cutout instruments seen in the album art is fab!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTJmYEhn8PU

normally when i listen to 'stella' i skip 'oh yeah' cos, well, you know.
but tonight i let it play out.
it really is a mad weird track to have ever become a signature track.

one of the weirdest pop hits ever ?

13 minutes of 'the race'.
still brilliant.

always!

i went to the Berlin gig mentioned above (4 years ago). Some of it was excellent but overall it was a bit underwhelming sadly.

did anyone bother with the album they put out last year?

joe muggs said it was one of the best sounding albums of the year.
just a shame re the crap cover art.
and yes, i am that shallow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2F0rg8LE_c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YybmWiEzrs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rECR4wVCMQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRo1cHlgIqk