Heavy Yello
by Mark Peel
Stereo Review, February 1988, pg. 183
 
YELLO:One Second. Boris Blank (synthesizers; Dieter Meier (vocals);
      vocal and instrumental accompaniment. [Lists all song titles]
      MERCURY 832 675-1/4/2 (49 min).
 
The carpenters have just finished propping up the floor joists under
my living room, so it with a caveat that I recommend "One Second," by
the Swiss duo called Yello, as perhaps the ultimate party record of the
year:  Don't fiddle with your amplifier's bass control when playing this
album.  Leave it at zero.  Even then, the rumbling subsonics in `La 
Habanera' and `Moon On Ice' may crack glass.

In my continuing search for cheap thrills, "One Second" ranks among the
cheapest and most thrilling.  Never has an album been produced so
shamelessly for the dance floor.  The aforementioned bass is just the
beginning.  Latin and Afro-Cuban percussion lace every track, a cheesy
but effective counterpoint to the spaghetti-western guitars, Caribbean
horns in hand-to-hand combat with disco strings, and crowd noises created
by the duo's synth composer, Boris Blank.  As if the beat weren't enough,
the vocalist, Dieter Meier, is a dark presence whose heavy Germanic 
accent gives the proceedings the atmosphere of a spy movie.  Meier 
elevates these songs from great dance music to great theater.  In `La
Habanera,' for example, we listen as Pedro Camacho, former agent for the
secret police, stands outside the Tropicana Club watching a city in the 
throes of revolution, consumed in flames, the last evacuation plane to
Miami rising overhead.  Not bad for disco.

While Meier and Blank are among Europe's leading electro-dance innovators,
a surprising and satisfying portion of "One Second" is played by
real backup musicians on real instruments.  In fact, the furious drum
work of Beat Ash, the guitar stylings of Chico Hablas, adn the bravura
trombone playing of Don Randolph and Steve Trop suggest that buried inside
the electronics there lies the makings of a pretty hot jazz combo.  The
only letdown is a cameo appearance by Shirley Bassey as a disco diva on
`The Rhythm Divine;' it's the one song in which the rhythm sags.  
Everything else is torrid.

So have a structural engineer inspect your sound room, do whatever
seismic reinforcing he recommends, then strap on your party helmet and
go for it.
 
(Picture: Dieter in a suit and tophat and Blank in a sailor's suit.)