#1

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Nobody seems to be quite sure if they're torchbearers for the dubiously dubbed 'electroclash' scene, a pair of performance artists, a cast of thousands Busby Berkley technicolour techno Broadway show or good old-fashioned synth duo. Whatever, Vanity Fair have apparently called them 'possibly the strangest band ever' which can't help but make you wonder what the people at that august publication listen to usually, as the bizarre fact is that Fischerspooner aren't actually very strange at all really.
This is music that is for the most part resolutely and proudly unprofound - "style is substance" runs their manifesto, and in many ways they are right - style is a substance, and - like anger - an energy. Foregrounding this at least is interesting. The website (http://www.fischerspooner.com) is indeed something to behold, showing off their crazed visual sense, sadly not reflected in the rather dull graphic of this CD (what is it that the guy's covered in?).
One shouldn't worry, however: even the most hardened 80's retro enthusiast who hasn't yet heard Fischerspooner will be relieved to know that they don't sound at all like Sigue Sigue Sputnik, though they do sound a bit like a harder-edged Pet Shop Boys, sometimes a bit like New Order in electro mode, now and then dip into mid-period Human League and occasionally teeter dangerously close to sounding like the Bloodhound Gang. Sometimes you can almost hear them soundtracking 'The Clothes Show'.
For the hardcore chinstroker (and anybody who can use the dread term 'IDM' without wincing), there will be much to dislike here. This is music that is pure retro, surprisingly hardly even investigating the camp or ironic manifestations of retro. Relentlessly superficial, it doesn't move forward any musical vocabulary, and apart from the odd acidic squelch here and there, this record could have been made ten fifteen or even twenty years ago (their contribution to Rough Trade's recent 'Electronic 01' compilation, 'Turn On' - included here - fitted in seamlessly between the Normal and early Depeche Mode). That doesn't mean, however, that it isn't delicious fun.
'Emerge' threatens to rock and builds up an impressive mass without quite reaching the heights it promises. (Surely a Felix da Housecat remix awaits? That'd be good.) The charmingly entitled 'Fucker' is a surprisingly low-key piece of techno, only whispered female murmur giving any hint as to why the piece may be so named. 'The 15th' is the Wire tune - a late 70's song getting an 80's makeover twenty years later in a bizarre retro hall of mirrors game. It sounds fantastic - the tinny drum machine, buzzing synths and whistling tones giving it a period charm it didn't have first time round. Fischerspooner have here clicked on to the secret that cold electronics topped with a wistful vocal melody is always a winning combination. 'Tone Poem' plays the same trick - almost the only time '#1' threatens to get deep, and it is lovely. The vocals which for the most part are deliberately flat, nasal and American-accented are betrayed by the singing on these pieces: on 'Tone Poem' an almost slacker mumble is set against the wispy synths to disarmingly beautiful effect. 'Horizon' is the other star track: a gentle motorik pulse just keeps on going while details casually fade in and out like roadsigns speeding by on the motorway while a melody creeps in unnoticed at first until by five minutes in it's grabbed you completely and hammering away despite the bpms not having risen at all. The perfect soundtrack to travelling and travelling and never arriving and never wanting to.
I'm sure Fischerspooner don't take themselves too seriously, and neither should anyone else (at least not at this point) - and that's another positive value, by the way.