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First released on Munich's fashionable International Deejay Gigolos label back in 2001, Fischerspooner's debut album
#1 was an immediate underground sensation. The creation of two New York fashion queens, Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner, it swiftly became the defining example of what clued-up onlookers began to know as electroclash--a brand of synthetic punk music using not guitars and drums, but the traditional tools of the 80s musician: synthesiser, vocoder, sampled handclaps, sequenced bass. Feted in the style press, Fischerspooner became immediate cult superstars--and at the beginning of 2002, signed to Ministry Of Sound for a hefty sum. "Emerge" is the record's defining moment: a seismic explosion of bass-powered synth-flurries accompanied by a nagging
bon vivant mantra--"Looks good / Feels good / Sounds good"--it's up there with
Donna Summer 's "I Feel Love" and
New Order 's "Blue Monday" in the canon of all-time dancefloor classics. And luckily, the rest of the record is almost as good. "F***er" sounds like a fuel-injected
Kraftwerk, all high-speed technoid blips and orgasmic vocoder moans, while "Turn On" finds Fischerspooner crafting their answer to a straightforward pop song--albeit, one that vogues more than
Madonna, and preens more than
Prince. It's a fantastic, accomplished debut.
--Louis Pattison
Reader Reviews
A word on this retro debate,and then on to the album ... I was there in the 80s listening to Kraftwerk and Visage as they came out (cough cough). Fischerspooner is a throwback in style in much the same way Lenny Kravitz is a throwback to the 60s. There are definite influences here from the 80s, but this is a reinvention of the form! These two art students are doing something very fresh and new. This ain't no rehash, and certainly is no Sigue Sigue Sputnik (as one reviewer mentioned). It's a damn good dance album, but it also has more than one mode. Often you just get one beat, and one mood for an entire CD when you buy an electronic album. But Fischerspooner varies their songs enough to make you feel like you're in an album and not just in a club. Not since Schiller or Enigma have I experienced the whole album with a dance artist as much as I did this one. But the high point definitely hits with EMERGE. It's a single that stays in your head on a loop for days. Snap up the limited edition with the DVD. You get all the videos and documentary footage that will make it all worth it! Join the revolution here! :-) Fight the boring dance music, and get into something punky fresh and new. Even if half the world is grooving to this as a VH-1 commercial! But you gotta admit the song is better than anything they play!
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