Cod acting

“Fischerspooner is an ongoing musical project about entertainment and spectacle. Music, dance, performance, fashion, film, photography and the internet are all tools that FS uses to fabricate its illusion of glamour and popularity.” – Deitch Gallery NYC press release

“Michael Jackson is dead. Madonna is dead. Britney is going down.” – Casey Spooner introducing a Fischerspooner show in New York

It’s London Bridge in late May and something sublimely spectacular is happening; a dazzling, jaw-dropping assault on the senses encompassing wind machines, glitter cannons, swish state of the art lighting, ludicrously large wigs, crowd surfing, costume changes befitting a 21st century techno-pop opera production of a Marquis de Sade novel, classic choreography and an Andrew WK lookalike vomiting fake blood. And for an encore, Casey Spooner drenches me with champagne. Nice. Laugh at them as the new Sigue Sigue Sputnik or laud them as the most vital pop experiment since the KLF, Fischerspooner gave the biggest, brashest, dumbest and funniest freak show around.

While this electro-pop spectacle is a rare treasure in an age of increasingly sterile and predictable ‘live’ shows, it’s not all feverish adulation, as Fischerspooner severely test the audience’s patience with a rather extreme application of the “keep ‘em waiting” maxim. The show is scheduled to begin at 9pm, but the only thing that starts at nine is a live video link up to the dressing rooms, so we know exactly why the show is running late - everyone is getting into costume.

Naturally, this is far more infuriating than it is revealing, a painstaking piss-take version of Japanese designer Issey Miyake’s a-poc (a piece of clothing) fashion show that centred around the models being dressed on the catwalk. But just as Miyake is best known for selling aftershave, Fischerspooner are in the business of selling albums, even though they begun their cultural terrorist careers as a loosely defined art experiment, arguably the most theatrically dysfunctional and hilariously ludicrous Manhattan project yet.

Initially, Casey Spooner pretended to be a 45 year old man who specifically hired Fischer to help him to live out his unfulfilled pop star fantasies. Shortly afterwards, he denied everything and claimed to be 25. They don’t refer to each other as a duo or band members (anyways, an entourage of stylists, make up artists and other indispensable personnel are always in tow) but as “co-founders.” It’s an infuriating, frustrating, exasperating farce, but a bloody entertaining one at that. Casey is the spokesman, while Warren writes the tunes and floats in the background, not even appearing onstage. Therefore, Spooner doesn’t care too much for talking about the tunes, ‘cos there is far too much propaganda and posing to get on with. He infamously stormed out of an interview with a music magazine when he was informed FS were not in consideration for the cover. When he phoned the editor to apologise, he demanded, “Who do I have to blow to be on the cover?”

They test the limits of what they can get away with, not least in Casey Spooner’s blatant disregard for that sacred unwritten commandment of credible ‘live’ performance; thou shall not lip-synch. He announces during the first few numbers, “Warren, can we have a bit more sound in the monitors? We can’t hear anything onstage. It’s impossible to lip-synch if you can’t hear yourself.”

“Its not like Warren can play acoustic guitar and I stand up there and sing by myself,” Casey explains. “It’s all about the illusion. I love to perform. I’m addicted to performing. I can’t get enough of it. I’d do anything to do it. Look at what I do in order to be able to do this. I totally dress and act like a 100% international fool just so I can get stage time.” Acting the 100% international fool once involved Casey going onstage resplendent in Chelsea boots, a set of medical leg braces and a suit of armour. Neither Casey or Warren are too bothered about being branded pretentious. Indeed, they revel in the term’s definition of feigning success. “I think that a large part of our success is more about what people imagine us to be rather than what we actually are,” Casey drawls. ”The more I can encourage people to fantasise the better.

“My role is to be totally immersed and lost in my self-absorbed world and that’s for someone else to interpret,” he continues. “It would be amazing if we actually could infiltrate pop music. I’m not interested in the underground. It’s much more exciting to feel that you’re reaching a larger group of people who you wouldn’t usually be in touch with. The great thing about a form like this is that it is not about some sort of exclusive audience. It’s about as many people as possible. We have a big chain of stores in the States called Wall-Mart and that’s the world I’m going for - Wall-Mart Best Buy.”

While Casey may claim to have no interest in the underground, their debut album #1 and club anthem ‘Emerge’ were first released on DJ Hell’s esteemed Munich imprint International Deejay Gigolos, a label that specialised in electro and handled classic releases from Steril, The Foremost Poets and Vitalic.

“We liked Hell’s record Music Machine a lot, Casey enthuses. “He had such a great reputation we knew he was someone we wanted to affiliate ourselves with. And he throws the best parties! And he is an incredible DJ! They aren’t your nauseous, shitty, run of the mill really bad dance parties.” Indeed, for these parties Hell constructed an assembly line of massive yellow robots called ‘Juke Bots’ that were programmed to play 12-inch records.

Hell’s roster of perverse and poptastic electro records have been championed by Dave Clarke, Andrew Weatherall and Felix Da Housecat for years. The genre’s popularity in the slavish style press led to the term ‘electroclash’ being coined, casting a nod at the genre’s punk spirit. Then an Electroclash 2001 event in New York headlined by Fischerspooner firmly placed the word in the genre-spotters lexicon. The dance world has made a virtue out of being anonymous and unassuming, electroclash is about being a show-off – a flamboyant backlash against a wilting culture that is desperate for new movements and a fresh lease of life. The first bona fide electroclash smash is the hypnotic Tiga & Zyntherius cover of Corey Hart’s ‘Sunglasses At Night’, re-released on the City Rockers label that is also closely associated with the electroclash shenanigans. Casey Spooner once said of Tiga – Witnness-bound for a DJ set this July – “Not only is Tiga obviously the 21st century’s first Canadian musical genius, he also gives the best head around. That guy could suck the chrome off a door handle.”

After linking the flamboyant wear what you like party scenes of Munich and Manhattan, Fischerspooner became the first ever artist to be signed to Ministry of Sound, the compilation factory that is more readily associated with being clubland’s best known and longest running spin-off brand. FS were rumoured to be signed for a figure somewhere between $1million and $2 million. This high profile signing was the first time most people heard of them, and ever since, they’ve got a lot of press for how they’ve spent their filthy lucre. Their most recent New York show reputedly cost $250,000 to stage and Casey claims he has blown most of his Ministry money on hiring the same personal trainer as Lou Reed. Then again, that could be another flagrant lie.

With all this mystery, rumour, speculation and outright rubbish surrounding them, how do we differentiate between Fischer-fact and Fischer-fiction?

“I’m afraid I can’t answer that question because that would take all the fun out of it,” Casey mischievously replies.

But then are you ever worried about accusations of…

“Accusations of WHAT?” Casey interrupts. “Of being a hype machine?”

Precisely.

“Oh my GOD! NO WAY!”

So is your primary motivation to garner press and critical adoration?

“Oh my God, that’s what I do it for!” exclaims Casey. “I’ve been nobody and now I’ve got the chance to try and be somebody. Both are a lot of work, but I’m willing to give it a try.”

Obviously, you like having fun with interviews?

“Oh God, are you kidding! I’m such a mouthpiece. That’s my number one skill. I can talk the pants off any performer.”

Unsurprisingly, legendary OTT performers as Neil Tennant and David Bowie are fans. Tennant playfully accused FS as guilty of being “so 1982 its not true.” “I’d love it if there were loads of kids running around in make up listening to Fischerspooner,” he raved. “That would make me very happy.” Bowie hand-picked them to headline a night of the Meltdown Festival running in London this month under his curatorship. “We said we wouldn’t do the show unless he guest vocaled on a song,” Casey recalls. “He gets a little bit of us and we get a little bit of him. I’ve never met or spoke to him. The festival told us that he was very excited and they had to have us no matter what. Because Daaay-vid wanted us. So it was all about Daaay-vid.”

From seducing the art-world and the electro underground to collaborating with David Bowie and being congratulated by Jeff Koons, it has been a weird and wonderful ride for FS with their actual sales figures secondary to all the hoopla. Even if they don’t become pop stars, they’re going to pretend to be pop stars and they love to imagine a parallel celebrity universe where themselves, Andrew WK and The Strokes are at the forefront of popular culture. “I think the music industry is really hurting,” Casey opines. “The process of selection and the way the music business is run has come to an end. It seems like they’ve exhausted their resources and I think that’s why things that are happening outside that.”

“We have risen without the support of the music industry,” Casey affirms. “We don’t need a flawed beast that is an incumbent and fat monster that can’t seem to make anything interesting. I think it’s mostly because they’re scared of failure more than they’re interested. That’s how most people in the music industry makes their choices. Number one, they’re scared of failure and number two, they don’t want to loose their job so no one is prepared to take a risk and it’s the easiest thing in the world to do something unusual and different because people are hungry for something.”

“For the most part, large corporations are concerned about their overheads and making their money back so they think in terms of large market shares so they try to emulate formulae. They try to come up with some sort of formula for success instead of just focusing on making something interesting, even just making something interesting for themselves. That’s all we’re trying to do really - entertain ourselves. We’re having fun and everyone can come watch.”

Casey Spooner has got to go to dream up the next cheap stunt, try on the latest frilly costume and compose the next elaborate lie. “By the way,” he concludes. “Please tell Ireland I said howdy-doo.”