Yello is a gently eccentric but hardly excessive Swiss synthesizer trio whose two previous albums established the group, rather dubiously, as the most accessible act on Ralph Records, a small San Francisco label run by that deeply eccentric synthesizer quartet, the Residents. No surprise, then, that this major-label debut bears Residential residues (the queasy synth lines on "I Love You," the toy-town keyboard sounds on "Heavy Whispers"). What's more telling is how deftly Yello has woven these little sonic salutes into its own highly engaging synthesized dance themes. There's an appealing electronic intimacy to Yello's music (perhaps because it's created almost entirely by one person, keyboardist Boris Blank) and a playful wit at work, as well: note the Ennio Morricone-like "guitar" line in "Crash Dance" and the fluttering mandolins in "Salut Mayoumba." Although the eleven tracks here are more "pieces" than songs, Blank has a sure compositional sense, and he never lets the technology wander off on its own. Effects specialist Carlos Peron adds snazzy tape interjections (screeching wheels on the careening "I Love You," jungle hubbub on "Great Mission"), and singer-lyricist Dieter Meier, who looks like a Bourse-bound stockbroker, makes a suitably suave frontman, particularly on the near-Floydian "Lost Again" and the decadently dapper "Swing." All this and a title track that actually cooks. You gotta say... not bad. (RS 405)

KURT LODER