Boris Blank

**Boris Blank** (born **Hans-Rudolf Strickler**) is a Swiss musician, best known for the musical project Yello.

## Early life

Boris Blank was born Hans-Rudolf Strickler on the 15th of January 1952 in the district 10 quarter of Wipkingen in Zürich, Switzerland. He is the youngest child of Walter and Margret Strickler and sibling to two older sisters, Heidi and Marg.

Blank's interest in music is noted to have begun from a very young age and from within his family. Both his father and grandfather were keen accordion players; his father would accompany his playing by making noises with his mouth while his grandfather liked to play the bass notes in a rhythmic fashion. Blank himself would take cooking utensils from his kitchen and play around with them to make music. The Swiss Alps were particularly noted by Blank as early musical inspiration; while on vacation in the mountains, he loved to shout into them and hear the resulting echoes. He would even mentally calculate the delay between him shouting and the echoes coming back to him.

At age 11, while playing with empty bullet shells, one exploded and blinded him in his left eye. He was hospitalized with a bandage over both of his eyes for three weeks. Blank has attributed this incident to a heightened sense of hearing he developed to compensate for his diminished eyesight.

Blank's first piece of musical equipment was a Revox tape recorder and A77 Echo machine that he borrowed from his parents. He would spend a lot of time recording sounds from around his house and using playback effects to radically alter them. He would also chop up and physically rearrange his tapes to achieve different sounds. The results were sometimes so long and complex that they covered his family's dining table and he would have to guide them through the machine with pencils stuck in plasticine.

After graduating from school, he studied architectural design for two years, but abandoned an apprenticeship in that field. Instead, he begun an apprenticeship in graphic design which he finished after a further two years.

## Meeting Carlos Perón and the formation of Urland (1972-1976)

In 1972, Blank was introduced to Carlos Perón (then-known by his birthname of Martin Müller) by a mutual friend. They became properly acquainted through discussions and arguments about their individual tastes in music. Around 1974, after being introduced to the genre of free jazz by Perón, Blank started to play tenor saxophone and decided to start his own jazz band with Perón's friends, Sternini and Ron Styler. Perón joined in two years later.

In 1976, they decided to move away from playing free jazz and took a New Wave direction. They christened themselves with the new name of Urland. For this reformation of the band, Blank switched out his saxophone for an electric guitar. During rehearsal sessions, he would also improvise electronic music pieces with Perón.

Friction between Blank and Sternini, culminating in a violent argument between the two, eventually led to the break-up of Urland.

## Transonic (1977-????)

After Urland's demise, Blank and Perón relocated to the Zürich outer-area of Wehntalerstrasse and built their own studio. They formed the duo Transonic and began creating electronic music in a variety of styles. They also worked with Ron Styler on the side-project U.R.Q. which directly continued on from their earlier improvised pieces.

Having recorded several hours of music, Blank and Perón decided to visit California in an attempt to get a record deal. Initially aiming to be signed with Siren Records, founded by their musical heroes Chrome, they accidentally contacted The Residents' Ralph Records. The executives at Ralph were impressed by Transonic's music and offered to release it all on the spot; however, this was declined by Blank and Perón as they wanted to polish the recordings first.

## References

1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 Warstad, J., 2018. The YELLO chronicles by JONAS WARSTAD The early years Part I - 1976-1979. Revised ed. EISENBERG édition musicale.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Ransom Note, 2015. Boris Blank - #2 Blindness. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYuIh4CYh2U> [Accessed 30 March 2021].