If you don’t factor in the presence of no less than two remix collections and an ‘Essential’ greatest hits along the way, ‘The Eye’ is the 11th studio album from arch Swiss electronic eccentricists Yello during a career lasting longer than 24 years. Producer / electronic musician Boris Blank and lyrical concept artist / vocalist Dieter Meier first emerged with their 1980 debut ‘Solid Pleasure’, which introduced Blank’s fusion of synthetic lounge, samba and funk with frenzied proto-sampling loops and cut-ups alongside Meier’s surreal Dadaist stream-of-consciousness lyrics and a throbbing Euro New Wave dance pulse.

Yello arguably reached their highest position in the wider public consciousness when their single ‘Oh Yeah’ (taken from 1985’s ‘Stella’ album) was featured prominently in the motion pictures ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ and ‘Secret Of My Success’, and to a lesser extent when ‘The Race’ (from 1988’s ‘Flag’) made an appearance throughout the Andrew Dice Clay cinematic vehicle ‘The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.’ Though they’ve only brushed the pop charts on a few occasions throughout the last two decades, during this same time Yello have remained consistently prolific, releasing a new album every few years and continuing to explore avenues of collaboration with the numerous contemporary electronic names lining up for a chance to work with this seminal outfit.

If 1995’s remix collection ‘Hands On Yello’ and 1999’s ‘Eccentrix’ remix collections illustrated anything, it was the sheer range of high-profile producers working today who’d grown up on Yello’s music and couldn’t wait to get their hands on the original master tapes to rework classics such as ‘Bostich’ and ‘Vicious Games.’ However, while Yello are undoubtably one of the most influential and innovative electronic acts of the 1980s, they face the same potential problematic issues as another of the great European surviving electronic acts – Kraftwerk. While Yello haven’t hermetically sealed their legacy ala the aforementioned Dusseldorf robots by going into self-imposed exile during the peak of 1990s electronic music proliferation, the fact remains that there’s a veritable forest of acts using electronics these days – where once Blank’s tape experiments were revelatory, many of the developments made by this pioneering act have become standard issue.

‘The Eye’ is Yello’s first release on Germany’s Motor Music (also home to incendiary synth-rockers Rammstein), following their departure from longtime distributor Elektra. ‘Planet Dada’ (also the first single to be released) opens this collection and features co-production from Data 80’s Hakan Lidbo, its eerie opening chords and Meier’s staccato cut-up and re-arranged vocal snippets riding an undulating backbone of clicking housey breakstep beats and digital swathes of sound. ‘Nervous’ begins with some trademark Yello synthetic swingbeat filled with reconstructed fat bass stabs and horn samples, Meier’s gravelly echoed vocals flanging and vocoding over the shuffling backbeat, while the Ian Pooley co-produced ‘Don Turbulento’ throws the spotlight on guest vocalist Jade Davies, its almost Pole-esque opening ambience giving way to a latin-fuelled swing track that brings to mind some of Bebel Gilberto’s recent remix experiments.

‘Soul On Ice’ is one of only two straight-out 4/4 dancefloor-oriented moments on this album, and traces Meier’s tale of dangerous nocturnal obsession over a lithe backdrop of echoing effects and detailed beats that easily matches Yello’s finest ‘racing past on a bullet-train’ moments, as does the robotically funky house outing ‘Tiger Dust’ – Meier’s cyborg exhortations of “One more time” sliding over the cut-up syllables and echoing synths. Ian Pooley also shows up for co-production duties on ‘Distant Solution’, which reintroduces Jade Davies’ airy chanteuse vocals over a strummed latin guitar, monkey whoops and a synthetic bass backdrop, before ‘Hipster’s Delay’ brings back the icy synths and spy-noir brass for what sounds like a perfect theme for a chase scene in some hyper-stylish Euro-noir thriller.

‘Time Palace’ and ‘Unreal’ are the remaining two tracks on ‘The Eye’ that feature Jade Davies’ lead vocals, the former being a melancholy synthetic soul-burner that sits nicely alongside classic Yello electronic torch songs such as ‘Of Course I’m Lying’ and ‘The Rhythm Divine’, and the latter being built around a sturdy backdrop of cycling latin percussion and Davie’s honey-smooth soul vocals. ‘Bougainville’ is built around swinging beats and a loping bassline that calls to mind echoes of King Tubby-style dub experimentation, Meier’s enigmatic French vocals phasing over the languid slide guitar tones and dreamy ragga cymbals, before ‘Star Breath’ closes this collection with the spectral droning of the sampled Monks of Bombila’s Gyuto Monastery flowing over ominous bass pulses and echoing tribal beats with what sounds like manipulated Middle Eastern instrumentation.

Finally, at the end there’s a bonus track – a ‘Flamboyant’ remix of opening track ‘Planet Dada’ that features Montreal cut-up house deconstructionist Akufen in co-production with Blank, in a collaboration that renders the original track pared down to its most skeletal elements and reconstructed in a stuttering form that renders comparisons between this album and Kraftwerk’s recent ‘Tour De France’ especially apparent.

‘The Eye’ is another strong album release from the consistently excellent Yello, who seem to be especially hitting their production stride again after some slight diversions into more generic, characterless house on 1997’s ‘Pocket Universe’ and 1999’s ‘Motion Picture.’ ‘The Eye’ stands up easily in terms of quality with the cream of Yello’s 1980s efforts such as ‘Stella’ and ‘The New Mix In One Go’, and the sonic contents more than capably show that Blank and Meier have kept their fingers on the pulse of contemporary developments in electronic music culture and production techniques. Most importantly, all the latest studio gear in the world doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t have imagination, and Yello have it in spades – ‘The Eye’ is coloured as much by their surreal Dadaist musings as it is by the latest digital trickery.

Recommended for fans of Kraftwerk, Senor Coconut / Atom Heart and Bebel Gilberto

Check out: www.yello.ch