Solid Pleasure

Released

Swiss mavericks Yello are often thought of as Euro synth-pop pioneers, placed alongside the likes of Kraftwerk and Telex. But their debut album (and sole record as a trio before tape-manipulator Carlos Perón) left shows there was always so much more to them than that. There are lashings of p-funk, Compass Point style dub-disco, postpunk urgency and pretty much everything else that was floating in the zeitgeist at the time fizzle and react together, all topped off with millionaire industrialist and gambler Dieter Meier’s dada chatter. It’s no wonder that they went on to such enduring creativity and influence: even right here at the start they were providing source material that would be picked up by dance legends from Masters At Work to Andrew Weatherall, and it is hugely clear from the energy underpinning it that, even with this overflowing bubblebath of weird, they had ideas to spare.

Joe Muggs

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