Ever elegant and assured in his style — that is how the co-founder and principal composer of Yello presents himself. Together with Dieter Meier, the Zurich native Boris Blank shaped our youth and the world of music, founding one of the most innovative acts on the electronic scene. Alongside the band, the brilliant sound artist has pursued projects of his own. On the occasion of his latest work, we met him in Zurich.
Your album “Resonance” grew out of a commission for a wellness centre.
Boris Blank: Exactly. Which is actually rather unusual. But the work for the Forty-seven thermal baths, designed by the architect Mario Botta, won me over in the end. It was, of course, also a challenge, because the danger of drifting musically into kitsch or some esoteric direction was very real.
How does your music come about? Do you first consider what associations it should trigger, or do the sounds come first?
Over the past 30 years I have collected a great many sounds, which I use the way a painter mixes colours on his palette. So I have certain sounds that serve, as it were, as the first dab on a blank canvas. I then follow it with further sounds until an outline emerges, a contour. And suddenly I discover — wow, that’s where the journey is heading! Unlike someone who can read music or write scores, I’m more of a person who lives in the mood. I’m often surprised myself at how a piece develops or how it sounds once it’s finished. At the thermal baths it was special: those rooms are fitted with a great many loudspeakers. You can send each individual sound there immersively. That three-dimensional world of sound reminded me of how, as a little boy, I first experienced stereo sound after mono.
What is different about the making of a Boris Blank solo album compared with Yello? Was your duo partner Dieter Meier involved nonetheless?
In this case, not at all. Which didn’t bother him, either. The fact is, I’ve always made the music in Yello. Yello was never a democratic band where one tells the other what to do. Fortunately, Dieter has always had plenty of strings to his bow — he’s a man of many talents. He also travels a lot. That was good for me. It means I can do my work alone, like a monk in seclusion on a mountain. Once a piece is finished, Dieter comes along, very quickly dreams up a character — and then travels through my soundscapes as its protagonist, so to speak.
You said you were a musical monk — and you are indeed as diligent as one. Do you go to the studio the way other people go to the office every day, lunch break included? Don’t you have to wait for a creative phase?
It’s just as you say — all that’s missing is the time clock. I go to the studio every day. And luckily, that joy and inspiration are almost limitless in me. I really shouldn’t say it out loud. I’m captivated from the very moment I sit down at a sound module or a synthesiser. Then I’m fascinated. Like a child that loves to play, every day.
You didn’t come to music by the classic route — recorder lessons as a child, that sort of thing?
Of course I played the recorder too. I never understood musical notation — I always copied it from the boy next to me at school. But then I could play back “Ihr Kinderlein kommet”, which the teacher had played for us, in no time at all.
Did it carry on seamlessly from there?
Actually, yes. I was fascinated when I was given a guitar back then. But I never had the knack for those strings, or the delicate touch. I played that guitar until not a single string was left. Then I glued a microphone into the sound box and drummed on it. Rhythm has always been with me. I drum wherever I am — even on walls, on the walls of lifts.
Did you have an audience early on, too?
Even at school, during German lessons, I used to play on the lid of my desk. Speaking of audiences: the teacher followed it closely. And he ordered me: “Blank, you’ll write an essay — two typewritten pages by tomorrow.” So it was a punishment exercise, entitled “Tapped Signals, the Communication Method of Primitive Peoples”. In that essay I wrote how glad I was to have finally found, in my teacher, someone who understood my tapped signals. Funnily enough, he thought the essay was so good that I was allowed to read it out to the whole class.
But you still weren’t allowed to keep tapping?
No.
Let’s stay with Boris as a little boy. I’ve read that you were fascinated by the echo in the mountains from early on.
Yes — mountains, echoes, underground car parks, enormous reverberation! Stairwells fascinate me too. Each one has its own frequency or vibration — its resonance, precisely. That was always important to me: not to work with conventional musical equipment, but to experiment with the most varied sound sources.
The music world has changed. And now artificial intelligence is entering the picture. What do you make of it?
The development of music technology makes life a little easier and more comfortable. But the idea and the architecture of creation — of how a piece comes into being — are exactly the same as they ever were. Recently, on a radio programme, I was played a piece generated by artificial intelligence — it was supposed to be Yello.
And how did it sound?
A cacophony like no other — I had to laugh. Now and then a sonorous voice surfaced, but it was nowhere near Yello. I believe that even today, music still needs a human impulse to have a character of its own. Mainstream music, on the other hand, can indeed be generated artificially. Our Yello brand of dilettantism produces some very strange blooms — ones that aren’t so easily copied.
What are you planning next?
I think Yello will soon be back in the foreground. I already have a few pieces in the works.
This article appeared in MEN issue 1/24 (May 2024).
