Hammer Horror and Glamour Beats.
Room Thirteen-"Where Music Rocks" prides itself on writing about rock music, by those and for those who eat, sleep and live rock. It's our guilty pleasure. One which we all share and this bond is realised and communicated to others in a common goal: AKA Room Thirteen. But the thing is, as much as I love rock, I'm a closet electronice freak. I love things that go 'beep' in the night. Consequently, when the new Fischerspooner single was sent my way, I nearly wet myself. For the uninitiated, when it comes to electronica, it doesn't get much better than this. I feel it is my duty now to let all of you know and encourage you to find out more about these two wonderful and quite original artists.
Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner are artists in the true sense of the word. In fact, they are masters of so many and such varied disciplines that it's hard to know how to define them or perhaps whether you really need to.
Having met during an experimental video class during their studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, that visual artistic streak that they originally bonded over has remained of paramount importance several years on and in the thick of a music career. Costume has always been an integral factor of the Fischerspooner world. Casey particularly looking like he's fallen out of a Commedia Dell'arte show like a demented Pierrot. This only goes to enhance his compelling vocals and enigmatic presence as front man. For those that can't put a face to the name, I suggest you Google him after reading this and appreciate the man himself as a living, breathing work of art.
Fischerspooner's debut album #1 was picked up on my radar due to an intoxicating album cover I saw of Casey which seemed to be all tongue. I had a hunch that what lay inside would be equally compelling and wasn't disappointed. A disc that had all of the flamboyance Vaudeville and yet the minimalism of Martin Creed. Here is an outfit that managed to pick up where the likes of New Order and Joy Division left off, infuse it with a punk edge and produce something that whilst being an amalgamation of all that's gone before, sounds like nothing else.
So over two years in the making, Fischerspooner's second album "Odyssey" has a throng of people waiting to see what these imaginative New Yorkers will do next. From the off "Just Let Go" weaves this percussive web around you. It is subtle and hypnotic and yet fills the space consuming the peripheral. By the time the beat is so firmly entrenched that your heartbeat and bio-rhythms are in time, beautiful harmonic synth. Lines lay themselves gently over the top. Casey Spooner's dreamlike narrative rides these lines as though they were waves. With each ebb and flow the music reaches every nook and cranny like the blood that floods your cheeks when you're flushed or embarrassed.
Though Fischerspooner's music is of an ilk, often situating the dance end of the spectrum, you'd be wrong to pigeonhole them into one genre. "Just Let Go" as the first single promises that this second album be no different. Warren Fischer travelled to LA to work with producer Tony Hoffer who similarly with previous artists Beck and Air infused their music with a delicious retro edge. Meanwhile Casey Spooner, continuing this unity of the converse and the perverse hooked up with Linda Perry - pop maestro and oft collaborator with the likes of Pink and then feminist genius Susan Sontag. This combination of the esoteric and the consumer friendly is the embodiment of Fischerspooner and the music they conceive. And that is why if you've yet to venture down the path of electronica, Fischerspooner should be your first port of call.