Customer Reviews

Claro Que Si

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is Yello at its best, before they mutated into a dance band. When they still made each track a multi-layered mini-movie. Psychedelic, mind bending, never predictable, it's a trip. Awesome cover design, if I say so myself.

The San Francisco based Ralph Records released Yello's first two albums, Solid Pleasure (1980) and Claro Que Si (1981), before being absorbed/bought out/whatever by Mercury in 1982/83. After that, I feel Yello was being influenced by the company's marketing department to come up with dance-track style music. Claro Que Si is a terrific album that represents their best work with the "smaller client friendly" Ralph Records. Pinball Cha Cha, The Evening's Young, and Daily Disco are among the most commericially successful songs, although my favorites are She's Got A Gun and Ballet Mecanique. The album design (courtesy Jim Cherry) is a real eye-catcher, and I'm happy to say that Claro Que Si remains as one of my all-time favorite Yello albums.

The second of the two Ralph albums is more mild than Solid-P but just as far out there. The quality of the recording isn't as good as the others but you will find their most creative moments here.

The 2nd album from this Swiss outfit contains some of their best material...."Pinball Cha Cha," "The Evening's Young," just to name two....but, for some reason, is the only one of their early albums that is out of print in the U.S. Yello never received much of a following in the states (with the exception of the classic single "Oh Yeah," which was used heavily in a couple of films and in about 50,000 TV commercials) but their influence on modern electronic music is undeniable. This CD is a must for any electronic music fan....if you're lucky enough to find it in a used bin somewhere, pick it up. If not, the import is definitely worth the extra bucks.

I still recall my sheer awe upon first hearing the track Homer Hossa. I used to be an audiophile back in the day when vinyl was at its peak, and would go to every little hole-in-the-wall deluxe turntable/tube amp place and see what they liked to demo on their $20,000 systems. It was in one of these places that the salesman smiled at my question and told me to sit in the sweet spot chair, carefully aligned to make their Macintosh amps, Carver speakers and Ariston turntables sound their finest.

I sat, and he lowered the moving coil cartridge onto the second last track of Claro Que Si.

I closed my eyes and immediately left the room, entering a jungle-sounding landscape/soundscape with gentle tribal rhytms in the background. The sense of binaural realism and spaciouness was incredible. I opened my eyes and looked at the guy. "Wow", was all I could manage. He grinned and said, "It gets better."

A few seconds later that soundscape, apparently complete and perfect, suddenly morphed into another, deeper realm, as the sound of someone diving into an azure waterfall pool surrounded by palm fronds opened the music into an even more pristine and massive world of sonic bliss, wih heavier drums and some Arabic cries in the distance. For five minutes I was absolutely transported to another world, and to this day, I have yet to find anywhere a more perfect sounding recording of nature and music together. Homer Hossa truly induces deep relaxation and joy when played at proper volume.

One of the goals of the vinyl audiophile is to create a perfect soundstage, where you can hear not only left-right harmony but especially depth and height, where the instruments "appear" to your ears to be exactly where they would be if the band was there. Bands like Floyd and Yello took this to another level, creating soundstages impossible in real life and thus letting the listeners' brains go somewhere we can't get in the real world. Homer Hossa, though never mentioned by anyone that I've ever found since except that audio guy (one review of this album here? And only three stars?), is still the ne plus ultra of sheer eargasm for my brain. Many gems lay hidden for ever, apparently.

When it was over I just looked up, stunned. The guy laughed and said, "Now check the last track out!" I closed my eyes again and waited for some new ethereal soundscape. Instead I got one of the most pleasingly electro-sounding things I'd ever heard (and I was a big fan of Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream from about 1978 on). Pinball ChaCha played out in all its angular funky glory, a completely different vibe but equally astonishing. As a long-term pinball fan, the lyrics also made me smile.

These two tracks are still among the best-sounding recordings I've ever heard, and I've heard tens of thousands. On headphones they are also magnificent; the AKG K701s make these tracks come alive in huge 3-D sound. I must confess that I've not heard the 2005 digital remaster; I got the original cd in the 80s but it sounds way flat next to the vinyl.

I think that these tracks are so intense because they were done at the nexus of the analog/digital switchover. They feature mostly digital instruments but were recorded in analog, and seem to showcase the best of both worlds. Once transferred to full digital, they must inevitably lose some of that analog shimmer and depth that still to this day I have never heard on any cd, no matter how 5.1 or HDCD they get. But I'll still bet that creator Boris Blank did a superb job on the new remaster.

The rest of Claro Que Si is decent but nowhere near as good; I could never figure out why those two tracks were so much better than the rest, but hey, no complaints. Either of them is worth the price of admission (twelve bucks for the import vinyl, I think). There are some nice moments, however, and any Yello fan will enjoy them.

So, in short: if you can find an old analog copy of this lp and it's in good shape, you've got something truly sublime. But if not, listen to the cd version of Homer Hossa at full volume in your car while driving through some majestic landscape, or in the dark on some lonely highway with your dash lights turned off. You'll not find a much more amazing sound extravaganza.

Kudos to Boris Blank, Swiss master craftsman of sound. This band and these tracks are his babies, and the term sonic genius is apt. What a musician, what a producer, what a pair of ears. And he's still got it; their new album Touch Yello is as good as ever. But Homer Hossa remains their masterpiece for me.

Well done, sir.

Yello's debut album Solid Pleasure presented the then trio as a strong avante electro funk-dance group with a lot of flair for rhythmic invention through different mediums such as sound effects as well as beats and percussion effects. When this second album came out that concept changed somewhat for them. This is a Yello that is gearing themselves to play more experimental and far less structured music. Some of these numbers such as "She's Got A Gun","Cuad El Habib" and "The Lorry" actually combine everything from ambient ballad styles to,in the later case simple 3-chord new wave rock for inspiration. The most dance oriented songs here are the opener "Daily Disco",which is a pretty direct jam even though it does have an obvious disco flavor as the title indicates while other songs such as "No More Roger" and the closer "Pinball Cha Cha" actually look more to more darkly witty 80's novelty electronic pop than anything else which,from a commerical perspective would wind up being their future.

Much better is the multi part,jazzy brit funk suite of "Ballet Mechanique" which contains some wonderful rhythmic changes and passages throughout and would've been a great way to extend on a kind of theme on this album had they been so inclined. This album is actually every bit as strong as their debut had been only the focus was more on created different sounds than the kind of rhythmic invention that was a big part of their sound first time out. But Yello may have a certains style and a number of different periods,they never were one of those groups that made multiple albums that sounded exactly alike. And if some are weaker or stronger than others to some ears it's only because Yello's albums can each appeal to different types of audiences. In some ways this does resemble their debut and in other ways it takes a very different approch. Again the important thing to state is that it depends on tastes and this album plays a few more games with the ears than their debut album did.

I am a very big Yello fan, so my recommendation in no way means I don't like the songs on this album. However, this is the re-mastered version, and I already own the original cd. The new songs on the cd are basically the same as the versions on the Yello Cd "1985-The New Mix in One Go." If you already have the original and the 1985 cd, it's not really worth getting this one.

In this album Yello goes back to the roots. The style of the album is quite minimalistic (these are really "songs", not "tunes"), but I find it fascinating. Some of my all-time-favourite electronic music is on this record. Just listen to "She's got a gun" and "Pinball Cha Cha"! By the way, there is a tremendous remix of "She's got a gun" on "Eccentrix".