Earlier this week writer Tricia Romano wrote a piece for Red Bull Music Academy chronicling the surreal rise of early aughts artpop phenomenon Fischerspooner.
It’s a dizzying trip to down memory lane to a pre-9/11 New York art and music scene that I remember fondly experiencing from several hours away in Philadelphia.
A portrait of the dawn of the digital age rubbing up against the end of the analog world, futurism violently colliding against a sudden exposure and seemingly available entire history of recorded music.
The culture was driven by literal world of mouth, but pulsed with the potential of technology. The internet buzzed with music blogs and people sharing their opinions, but social media and smartphones were still science fiction.
It was the end of an underground, but an underground nonetheless.
Mashup No Wave Electroclash Rockism and an ecstatic apocalyptic youthful abandon that presided prior to the horror of actual tragedy laid the foundation for our modern electronic pop culture.
Fischerspooner’s #1 album and the single that preceeded it, “Emerge” cheekily poked fun at itself and the absurdity of artpop creating it.
Everyone from Lady Gaga to M83 effectively owe a debt to Fischerspooner‘s Dadaist club court jesters.
Years back, I’d heard some pretty interesting stories from a college friend who’d become a touring member of the band, but Romano’s piece gave me good reason to dust off the album and fall in love with their exquisite cover of Wire’s “The 15th” all over again.