Time Lab Yello

• 1 Around The Sun 03:27
• 2 Break Out 03:08
• 3 You And Me 03:44
• 4 Saturday Morning 03:15
• 5 Unbelievable 02:49
• 6 Dancing Flame 03:30
• 7 About Time 04:04
• 8 Spin Back 03:09
• 9 Beautiful You 03:51
• 10 Streets Of Berlin 03:49
• 11 China Blue 03:39
• 12 Burning Dream 03:42
• 13 Midnight Traffic 03:12
• 14 Zebra 05:55
• Total Runtime 51:14

Info for Time Lab

YELLO return to the laboratory of sound with TIME LAB - a new studio album.

More than four decades after helping redefine electronic pop, Swiss pioneers Boris Blank and Dieter Meier continue to create music that belongs entirely to their own universe: cinematic, playful, unpredictable and engineered with extraordinary attention to rhythm, texture and space.

The first two previews, “Around the Sun” and the newly released “Break Out,” suggest that TIME LAB will carry YELLO’s unmistakable identity into another fascinating chapter.

“Break Out” is constructed around a powerful brass hook, strong electronic beats, Dieter Meier’s deep staccato delivery and rhythmically transformed vocals. Boris Blank explains that his compositions do not begin with a conventional verse–chorus formula: one sound inspires another, and the music develops organically through experimentation and surprise.

Early coverage has described the single as a funky electronic dance anthem, praising its bouncing synthesizers, hypnotic vocal hooks and unmistakable YELLO character.

The album’s visual identity also reconnects the present with YELLO’s celebrated past. Zurich graphic designer and artist Ernst Gamper—the creator associated with the unforgettable covers of You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess and Stella- returns for TIME LAB. The artwork reflects the album’s central idea:

“Time begins where it ends, or vice versa.”

Although the complete album has not yet been released for full critical review, “Around the Sun” and “Break Out” offer an enticing first glimpse: bold electronic architecture, deep bass, unconventional arrangement and that rare combination of humor, sophistication and sonic precision that has always distinguished YELLO.

For audiophiles, collectors and devotees of adventurous electronic music, TIME LAB is already shaping up to be one of the most intriguing physical-format releases of 2026.

YELLO

YELLO
The pioneers of electronic music came in a variety of guises. Some whipped up a Milky Way of cosmic sounds. Others explored the hypnotic power of robotic repetition. Still others experimented with conceptual sound patterns. And then there were Yello. Inspired by the Dada spirit of their hometown, Zurich, as well as records by the likes of John Coltrane, Pink Floyd and Californian mavericks, the Residents, every single sound that came out of their machines told a story. Some were absurd, some bizarre, some just plain funny. Whatever the story was, it also had swing and – “oh, yeah!” – it was dead catchy.

„Solid Pleasure“ promised Boris Blank and Dieter Meier with the title of their debut album in 1980. Forty years later, their fourteenth album, “Point”, still delivers just that, solid pleasure. Even now, Blank speaks with childlike wonder of the joys of creating paintings and stories with sound. Meier is just as passionate when he describes the good fortune of two such different creative minds running into each other: “It is a great privilege to discover such a harmonious symbiosis in one’s life.”

It all began with a „double catastrophe” for Blank, recalls Meier. Meier, already a well-known conceptual artist, had linked up with a punk band. Blank thought they were appalling. He himself spent every spare minute working on his idiosyncratic brand of electronic instrumentals. A mutual friend quite liked these but thought they needed a voice. Against the protestations of Blank, who did not want a singer, and certainly not a Meier, the friend sent Meier round anyway. The results, lo and behold, were not quite as awful as Blank had anticipated. Not much later, Blank and early Yello member Carlos Peron boarded a plane to San Francisco. Young and fearless, they headed straight for the office of the Residents to hand over a copy of their demo cassette. Blank: „They said, wow, this is seriously outstanding, we’d like to offer you a contract.”

Their first single, “Bostich”, mysteriously became a huge hit in New York’s Afro-American underground club scene. From there, the unmistakable Yello sound – a collage of styles from everywhere – travelled the world. Albums like “You Gotta Say Yes To Another Excess“ (1983), „Stella“ (1985), „Pocket Universe” (1997) and „Toy” (2016) hit the upper regions of the charts. Their hit singles “The Race“, „Oh Yeah“ and „I Love You“ still frequently turn up in film soundtracks on both sides of the Atlantic. All sorts of voices, from Shirley Bassey to Billy Mackenzie and Stina Nordenstam, have abandoned themselves to the Yello groove in the band’s studio high above Lake Zurich. Three years ago, Blank and Meier finally conquered their fear of the stage with a mini tour that was brilliantly captured on a DVD, „Live in Berlin“. They say you can‘t teach an old dog new tricks. Yello have never followed the rules. They still don’t.

Boris Blank
born in 1952 in Zurich, never set out to be a rock musician. He never learned to play an instrument or read music. For him the world – whatever he heard, a motor, a clock - everything was and still is music.

This singular world view has served him well. When Yello started recording, the sampler had not even been invented. Boris diligently sampled sounds by recording directly onto tape loops. No one had ever heard such innovative electronic music before, not even the masters of the genre.

“I wouldn’t be where I am today without this Swiss electronic duo. Their music belongs to the most influential and remarkable in electronic music.” MOBY

“So there was a producer in Switzerland who had an endless repertoire of bizarre sound samples and original and distinctive synthesizer sounds at his disposal that nobody had ever heard before. Who was this man? How did he create them? The music of Yello helped to mould all music that I would conceive in the future. The detail that was used to produce the many Yello albums has been a guide to how I produce my own music and beats. By the way, Yello IS mad, Oh Yeah.” CARL CRAIG

“The most inspirational thing about Yello is their attitude to music. They have never made a record simply to have a chart hit. It seems to me that they only produce what they love and inspires them. Their records always sound like they’re just a bit more\tthan music.” CARL COX

“Boris Blank: he started it all.” DAVID MORALES

“In the vast array of man machinists, Boris Blank stands alone. He rarely talks about technical details, preferring to use a language of his own. He once described a mix as 'not having enough silver in it'. I first met Boris at Powerplay Studio near Zurich in 1981. He wanted to play me some rough mixes from Claro Que Si and started with Daily Disco and Homer Hossa. The music seemed to roar like a steam-train leaving a trail of smoke against an endless blue sky. I can still remember it today, clear as daylight, it was time and space travel rolled into one. ” IAN TREGONING

Boris Blank’s prolific imagination knows no boundaries, and for this reason he has\tbeen courted by Hollywood film makers and advertisers. His music evokes images in the mind and takes you to continents that you do not know.

He has created the film scores for “The Adventures of Ford Fairlane”, Manga “Space Adventure Cobra” and Penelope Spheeris’s film “Senseless.”

John Hughes used Yello’s international hit “Oh Yeah” in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and the song entered the modern world’s collective unconscious. “The Secret of My Success” with Michael J. Fox soon followed suit and also used the song to describe desire.

Boris has written numerous musical scores for advertising and promotional campaigns, such as Jean Paul Goude’s “Orangina” and “Lee Cooper” and Audi.

Boris’s friendship and collaboration with the late Billy Mackenzie of the Associates was mutually inspirational. Boris produced 6 tracks for Billy, and they merged their talents on Yello’s international hit “The Rhythm Divine”, sung by Shirley Bassey.

Dieter Meier
was born in 1945 in Zurich. In the 1980s, he first became known to the broader general public as part of the music duo YELLO, which is now considered one of the most influential electro-Pop acts per se. At the same time, Dieter Meier was active as a film and video clip director, and his music videos for YELLO emphatically defined the genre and were constantly on show on MTV. Far less well-known is Dieter Meier’s oeuvre as a concept and performance artist, starting as long ago as the late 1960s.

With his radical situationism, as absurd as it was humorous, Meier started to explore new spaces and scope for art. For a 1970 exhibition in Munich he spent 12 hours walking round the city, marking each minute where he went, stood or rested with stamped clock stickers. In Kunstmuseum Luzern visitors had to clock in and out, attesting to the time they had spent in any empty room. The intention was “that they had dedicated one or two minutes of their lives to me,” Meier says. At the ICA London Meier screened a film with the instructions that visitors for ten minutes please hold up the large white sheet of paper they had been given at the ticket office in front of their faces. “And that was the film,” comments Meier. In Munich, in a courtyard he constructed a large wooden cube, chose 30 people from the phonebook and invited them to watch him spending an hour in the cube – the action took place, but only one visitor came and watched.

For a photo project, in 1976 Meier shaped figures using icing sugar and molding putty, only to destroy them a little later. That same year, Meier exhibited 48 imaginary biographies in Zurich. But by then Meier had had enough of the “art race” and together with Boris Blank founded the YELLO duo. The influence of Dieter Meier’s early works is clearly discernible in YELLO’s music clips: For example, the molded figures (Meier called them “Lost sculptures”) resurface in the video for “Pinball Cha Cha” (1982).

Alongside his work as a musician and artist, Dieter Meier is a writer (Hermes Baby, Ammann Verlag, Zurich; Out of chaos, Edel Verlag Hamburg), author of children’s books (Windjo, Limmatverlag, Zurich; Oskar Tiger, Kein & Aber, Zurich) and filmmaker (81'000 Einheiten, Jetzt und Alles, Lightmaker). He has played pro poker, designed watches, and has an organic beef farm and winery in Argentina. He sells his products in Germany, the States, Switzerland and in his store for Argentine products in Zurich, Weinkontor “Ojo de Agua”.

Deichtorhallen Hamburg was showcasing the versatile oeuvre of Zurich artist and polymath Dieter Meier – for the first time in the form of a comprehensive museum show. The exhibition “Dieter Meier – works 1969-2011 and the YELLO years” ran from June 25 - September 11, 2011 at Sammlung Falckenberg Hamburg and will be shown in 2012 at ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. A catalogue, published by the Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, includes essays by Harald Falckenberg, Stefan Zweifel, Max Dax and Peter Weibel and a DVD.

This album contains no booklet.