Biography
Boris Blank, a Swiss-born composer, arranger, and producer focused on electronics, founded the electropop ensemble Yello and remains chiefly identified with that project. He entered the world in Bern, Switzerland in 1952 and showed an early fascination with music. Without ever acquiring formal skills in reading notation, he instead immersed himself in the experimental potential of the studio, constructing tape loops from everyday noises and reshaping sampled material. After a brief period working as a truck driver, he assembled the electronic pop trio Yello during his twenties alongside musician Carlos Perón and conceptual artist and singer Dieter Meier. The group’s singular, arty, high-concept style, together with the innovative videos Meier directed, earned critical recognition across the 1980s and 1990s. Its track “Oh Yeah,” drawn from the 1984 album Stella, reached widespread commercial success and became a lasting pop-culture reference after appearing in John Hughes’s 1986 comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Outside Yello, Blank has issued functional recordings under the name Avant Garden, several volumes of which appeared on Extreme Music beginning in 2012. In 2014 he joined Malawian singer Malia for the jazz-and-electro project Convergence.
Albums
Singles
