Yello, that's Boris Blank and Dieter Meier. The biggest hits "Oh Yeah" or "The Race" have been around for a while, but the everlasting releases have never lost their quality. Their new album Point, among others, exemplifies another bullet point in a great series. And for the first time in Dolby Atmos. Boris Blank, the man behind the music of Yello, took the time to give us an interview.
Yello has been around for over 40 years. Other bands that are still around after such a long time may still tour every few years, but new music is rarely released. Point, on the other hand, is your 14th album and the longest break between two albums was “only” seven years (Touch Yello, 2009; Toy, 2016). Where do you get this creative power from? What drives Yello?
As the musical driving force behind Yello, making music is like food for the metabolism that keeps me alive. I actually need the music to survive. Not a day goes by that some sound doesn’t inspire me to make something out of it. There are very many different frequencies that occur in the music world, all these bass frequencies, these percussion instruments, they can be replaced by any sounds that surround us every day. You can make music with them, and that’s my world. And the acoustic space has also fascinated me from the very beginning. It was like that even as a child in the mountains. You played with the echoes from the rock walls where you shouted in. Depending on the distance, the echoes were shorter or longer. Room sounds are indeed something fascinating. Even today, underground garages inspire me when you clap in them – then you hear the vastness that then comes back. And to be able to play with that in music is fantastic. Dieter says about me, “Boris will still be sampling the coffin nails that get hammered in.” That means I’m never too old to be able to play music. Music is my world, my breath, so to speak.“Boris will still sample the coffin nails that are hammered in”
That means you’re always running around sampling something?
Actually, not as often as 40 years ago, but of course I always have my iPhone with me and if I hear something exciting somewhere, I record it. I’ve been putting together a sound library for years. Even back then I threw snowballs at walls and recorded that in stereo and then made some bass sound out of it. That’s a lot of sounds I’ve collected over the years and they’re always available to me. And they are also constantly being reworked with the latest technologies. So I deface these sounds over and over again, so that you don’t recognize their origin anymore.
In this way, new worlds are always created from the old worlds. With the latest technologies, you can almost dive into the molecular structure of a sound to play God and manipulate everything. That’s part of my research drive.
And Dieter will only join in when everything is set musically?
This has proven itself over the years, especially since Dieter also has many other projects and businesses going on. So this is also an ideal situation for him. The monk downstairs in his studio creates the music in seclusion from the outside world. Dieter comes to it when the sound building is standing and walks through it like the protagonist in a movie. He is always fascinated and very quick on the scene. He is like a chameleon – in every play he finds a new role.
Does he come to you to write or does he write somewhere else?
The studio is in the house where his family lives and when Dieter is there, and not in Argentina or somewhere else, then of course he comes down to see what I’m doing. And when he comes down the stairs to the studio, he whistles really loud so that I don’t get scared while I’m working.
“I can’t read music, I didn’t learn harmony or anything like that. I think it’s the way I approach things with childlike joy.”
Is this special way of working also the reason for the unique Yello sound? The previously released single Waba Duba sounds like an homage to your big hit The Race, especially because of the saxophone sound. On full album length Point then also sounds exactly like Yello has always sounded – and in the best sense: funky, weird and at the same time from the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow. Yello has always had a high recognition value and yet still sounds unique. How come nobody has tried to copy your sound?
It was never the intention to launch a specific concept with our approach. That’s just our musical DNA, if you will.
I was recently invited to a podcast conversation about artificial intelligence (Podcast Supernova). They played me a piece to start and asked me what I was listening to. That was a jumbled something that you throw in a washing machine and you don’t hear anything to hang on to. That had no statics, no grounding. It was explained to me that these are various Yello songs that have been fed into a computer program to see what the program makes of them. So even computers have difficulties with that. If you throw in Debussy or Chopin, something similar comes out of it, but with our pieces it’s actually difficult. Out came a complex, inaudible cacophony.
Possibly my ignorance of music plays a role in this typical Yello sound. I can’t read music, I didn’t learn harmony or anything like that. I think it’s the way I approach things with childlike joy. As I said earlier, I work with sounds from the world that I have found and like. Like a squirrel burying nuts, I have folders everywhere with set pieces that I once pre-produced. I put them together like a puzzle. And in the end, I’m amazed myself at what comes out of it. At some point, an outline of something emerges and that’s when I think, “Yes, that’s where it has to go.” And in the end, I’m amazed myself at what comes out of it.
Perhaps this way of working is part of what makes this recognizable.
That’s a compliment – even great artists like Mozart can be recognized after three or four bars.
“Humor is important to be able to survive decently”
Yello’s lyrics have always been often surreal and dadaistic. But also the sound somewhere between wobbling electro and creaking funk seems absurd in parts, though always organic and never unnatural. In combination, your music is not only catchy, but one also has to smile when listening to it. Is humor the key to Yello’s success? That’s already something that you maybe do differently than one usually knows it from electronic music.
I think that for me and Dieter, humor is a very important component. Humor is important to be able to survive decently and to look at this world with a certain irony and to laugh at oneself. And we both laugh a lot and we are happy doing it. I think that’s an important point, that you don’t take yourself too seriously and that you can fail sometimes. Also that you are not always on top and can explain everything. Humor is like the swimming belt in the current of life.
How did the album title Point come about? Does the title set the full stop of a long sentence or is it another bullet point of your impressive career? Is there any particular background to this?
Actually, no. Finding a title is one of the most difficult moments for both of us. So we share this task.
Dieter was in Buenos Aires and called me and said: „Boris, how do you like Pointas an album title?” I was fascinated instantly. This can be interpreted in many different ways. For me, it’s “the point of no return,” so we can’t go back. I don’t hope that will be the end point or the final point, but of course those are the first questions that come up. But you can interpret that however you want. This can be intersection, midpoint, etc. – there are so many possible variations of combinations of what is related to “point”.
“I was speechless, goose bumps all over my body – an experience that will stay.
To me, Dolby Atmos is comparable to going from mono to stereo.”
Point is the first Yello album to be released in Dolby Atmos. How and when did you become aware of Dolby Atmos? What does this immersive sound mean for Yello as a band and for music in general?
That was last year in February. That’s when we went to Universal and contributed our ideas. A whole table full of people sat there and then Philippe König from the catalog department suggested that Dolby Atmos might be interesting for us. I had no exposure to 3D mixes at the time, but was very taken with the idea.
Weeks after that, I was shown many examples of various performers in Dolby Atmos at the Zurich University of the Arts, in a Dolby Atmos certified movie theater. That was totally overwhelming, and thus also the initial spark to have Yello’s “Point” mixed by the master of the Dolby Atmos sound world, Stefan Bock of MSM Studios in Munich.
Stefan had my full confidence, since I had no idea about 3D sound mixing yet. Weeks later, the acceptance of the music took place in the same hall in Zurich.
I was speechless, goose bumps all over my body – an experience that will stay.
For me, Dolby Atmos is comparable to the switch from mono to stereo back in the 60s.
