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Fischerspooner
June
2003
 Alternately
hailed as avant-garde electronica geniuses and two
guys in Adam Ant make up ripping off Gary Numan, the
duo Fischerspooner are undeniably the current darlings
of the electro-clash universe. They are in the Rock
Express Spotlight this week with "Emerge,"
from their debut album "#1" on Capitol Records.
One half of Fischerspooner, Warren Fischer, was born
in Los Angeles, California to an opera singer and
a psychologist and he spent much of his youth performing
as a violinist. Fischer later transferred out of the
University of Wisconsin's engineering program to pursue
music and headed to the Art Institute of Chicago in
1990, where in a video arts class he met Casey Spooner.
Spooner was born to a visual arts teacher in Athens,
Georgia. After dropping out of the University of Georgia,
he headed to the aforementioned Art Institute of Chicago,
where he fell in with an experimental theatrical group,
met Fischer and started writing lyrics for his fledgling
band, Table. He became disenchanted with the insular
and elitist art scene in Chicago and in 1998 headed
for New York with Fischer. Fischerspooner made their
first performance as a two-person lo-fi electro-pop
outfit in a New York Starbucks. By 2000, Fischerspooner
was the buzz band of downtown Manhattan, and there
are now regularly up to 20 people on stage (sometimes
more), including dancers and performance artists --
and not one of them is Fischer (who has of late adopted
a more backroom approach).
Fischerspooner released their self-titled debut in
2000, which spawned the underground hit single "Emerge,"
and in 2002 they remixed and re-released the debut
as "#1." However, when asked how it all
started, Fischerspooner keep themselves entertained
by never giving the same answer. "I just start
to dream about what could be the most exciting and
bizarre thing that you could say, relative to that
topic," says Fischer. "So it kind of becomes
a challenge. Like the time we talked about the time
we met at M.I.T. - how we were programmers and we
hired a marketing team to find electro as a style
of music and we'd bring in stylists to create the
image and it's an experiment."
Fischerspooner took home the Best Remix award at the
2003 Dancestar U.S.A. awards, held in Miami Beach,
Florida, thanks to their brilliant remix of Kylie
Minogue's smash hit "Come Into My World."
The official web site, www.dancestar.com, heaped praise
on the duo, writing, "Fischerspooner have re-energized
the electronic world with a powerful debut album and
this remix of Kylie Minogue says everything about
where the future lies for dance music."
The group nearly turned down the job, though, because
Fischer was so nervous about doing it. "We're
big fans of 'super pop.' Since [Fischer] had never
done a remix he was really concerned he was gonna
do a bad job," says Spooner. "I think it
came off great - apparently Kylie likes it."
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