Yello

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Yello's newly created Logo
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Yello's newly created Logo

Yello is a popular Swiss electronica band consisting of Dieter Meier and Boris Blank. They are probably best known for their singles "The Race" and "Oh Yeah", which featured a rich mix of electronic music and manipulated vocals. "Oh Yeah" became famous after being featured in the American movies Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Secret of My Success, and more recently Soul Plane. The song is used on The Simpsons as the theme for the Duffman character. "The Race" is well-known in Germany as the theme music to the Eighties pop show Formel Eins and was also used in the movie Nuns On The Run. Yello's music is also often used for demonstration purposes on Hi-fi shops to show off their products. This is because Yello's music often have a rich sound emphasizing on bass and treble in particular. The Race also featured in the Pink Panther movie of 2006.

Contents

[edit] Band history

Yello was originally formed by Boris Blank and Carlos Peron in the late 1970s. Dieter Meier, a millionaire entrepeneur and gambler , was brought in when the two founders realised that they needed a singer. Meier and Blank joined forces in 1979 to release a single called "I.T. Splash". The LP Solid Pleasure, featuring the hit dance single "Bostich", was released the following year.

In 1982 [actually in 1995, not 1982] Yello's music was used as the soundtrack for the anime movie Space Adventure Cobra. Then in 1983 Yello received substantial media attention with the release of "I Love You" and "Lost Again". Peron left the band in 1983 to start a solo career. With their 1983 effort "You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess" album, the band began a working relationship Ernst Gamper, whose "corner cut" logo would represent them for 3 albums, and who would design covers for the group beyond the demise of this logo.

Yello takes great pride in its original sound, which is mainly characterised by weird samples, a heavy reliance on rhythm and Dieter Meier's dark voice. Boris Blank has taken a couple vocal turns on "Swing" (from "You've Gotta' Say Yes to Another Excess) and "Blazing Saddles" (from "Flag"), and guest vocalists have included Rush Winters (the first female diva to be featured on a Yello recording), Billy Mackenzie, and Shirley Bassey. The group is not afraid of collaboration and has shared writing credit with MacKenzie and Winters. Every track on a Yello album has been created by the band from scratch. Nearly every instrument has been sampled and engineered by Boris Blank, who over the years has built up an original sample library of over 100,000 named and categorized sounds.

Yello's music is often described by its fans as very visual, creating dramatic movie-like visions in their minds. This quality has made Yello popular in the TV, advertisement and movie industries. The single Oh Yeah has been featured in numerous TV commercials, used as the soundtrack for American Football on US TV, a soundtrack in the game Gran Turismo 4 played when a license test was failed, and included in at least four different Hollywood movies (Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Secret of My Success, K-9, and Soul Plane), while another single, "The Race" has been heavily used by Eurosport and numerous car related programmes. Yello also created the soundtracks for the British comedy film Nuns on the Run and the American movie The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, and recorded a version of "Jingle Bells" for the film The Santa Clause. It is also the theme song of Duff Beer in The Simpsons.

Meier is also a filmmaker, having written and directed the films Jetzt und Alles and Lightmaker as well as most of Yello's music videos.

In 2005, Yello re-released their early albums Solid Pleasure, Claro Que Si, You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess, Stella, One Second and Flag, all with rare bonus tracks, as part of Yello Remaster Series.

A documentary on Yello, Electro Pop made in Switzerland, directed by Anka Schmid was premiered at the Riff Raff cinema in Zurich in September 2005

[edit] Discography

Notable Singles

  • "Bostich" (1981)
  • "I Love You" (1983)
  • "Live at the Roxy" (a one-sided twelve inch release in its original form) (1984)
  • "Desire" (1985)
  • "Oh Yeah" (1985)
  • "Vicious Games" (features Rush Winters vocals)(1985)
  • "Goldrush" (Featuring Billie MacKenzie)(1986)
  • "The Rhythm Divine" (w/Billie MacKenzie and Shirley Bassey) (1987)
  • "The Race" (1988)
  • "Of Course I'm Lying" (1989)
  • "Jungle Bill" (1992)

[edit] Cars

Swiss car firm Rinspeed produced the "Yello Talbo" concept car in association with the group.


[edit] External links

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