Fischerspooner is an art pop performance project created and helmed by Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner that makes music, dance, fashion, film and photography. Their work fuses fine art and pop culture, as in their renowned outsider pop shows bursting with stage effects presented in both art galleries and traditional concert halls. Their full-length albums of music include 1, a punked-up digital party record trussed with conceptual lyrics; and odyssey, a rich emotional fantasia with a deep, expansive sound.
Fischer and Spooner met at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago, where they collaborated on performance art pieces. Years later in New York, Warren was starting his career as a commercial director and Casey was ready to move... a nine-year tenure with the experimental theatre company Doorika; both were looking for a new creative outlet. Eager to rekindle their collaboration, they attempted a TV pilot but became more interested in the digital soundtrack Warren had composed for the show.
Between 1998 and 2000 the duo wrote a spate of cool electronic tracks to accompany an ambitious new performance idea. The music was perfectly pitched for the turn of the millennium: a pure digital statement equally informed by Spooners' love of pop confection as by fischers classical training and background in the seminal math-rock band table. The show, a smash-up of pop extravagance undercut by experimental theatrics, was carried off with aplomb by Spooner, the flamboyant trickster front man, and driven home with fischers pulsating, addictive beats. With the help of an ever-expanding network of dancers, singers, designers, and artists, the performances grew into large-scale arena-style pop spectacles staged in galleries and nightclubs.
In May, Fischerspooner will release Entertainment, their third full-length album. Recorded over a two-year period with producer Jeff Saltzman (The Killers, The Sounds) the music marks a further maturation of the groups sound. Written and recorded independently in a carriage house in Brooklyn, the primary collaborators this time were an intimate circle of artists working on the live show: Ian Pai, Ben Bromley and Sam Kearney. The albums special guests include actress/performance artist Ann Magnuson (Bongwater), UK musician Gabriel Olegavich (Lady Sovereign, Spektrum) and electronic collagist Steven Stein (Double Dee & Steinski).
A taste of the unexpected, full of surprise flavors, Fischerspooner looks forward to unleashing their new work in 2009: entertainment, an album aswirl with ideas and fresh sounds, and an electric stage show bridging the worlds of art and pop.