#1 Reviewed by Other Music// American Gigolo

It really comes as no surprise that the jet-set turntable technician DJ Hell would take an interest in the New York performance group Fischerspooner, whose first self-released record has been immensely popular (even cult-gathering!) since its release in May of 2000. The shiny new vinyl and CD version on Gigolo grafts their video and a digipak onto the original. Karen Fischer and Casey Spooner are but two of the troupe of dancers, DJs (including NY electro-fiend John Selway), and even an attendant. Their (anti) aesthetic manifesto concludes: "Fischerspooner is a reflective portrait of entertainment itself: admiring in public what is considered frivolous in private."

Their hyper self-reflexivity goes so deep into infotainment kitsch as to reveal the ghostly photographic negative that lies beneath. What can be seen there is that Fischerspooner predict and perform a listener's / viewer's cynicism in advance, freeing the audience up to plunge into unconstrained pleasure. And the pleasure is intense. Electro-funk never sounded so clean, so cold, so warm and so hard. This is music that will always be both ahead and behind its time. The term "classical" is normally reserved for 19th century European composers. But it is records such as Fischerspooner's debut album that will come to inherit that term.

#1 Audio Samples.

1. Sweetness
2. 15th
3. Emerge
4. L.A. Song
5. Tone Poem
6. Horizon
7. Invisible
8. Turn On
9. !@*$%#.
10. Natural Disaster
11. Ersatz
___Hidden Tracks:
12. Megacolon
13. Emerge (Junkie XL Mix)

Fischerspooner is an ongoing project about entertainment and spectacle that began as a two-person collective.

Their electronically driven songs are served up in an assault of pop theatrics. They’re the subject of magazine features and gossip items around the world.

They’ve remixed and collaborated with Kylie Minogue, done a command performance for David Bowie, and have worked with the world's top photographers, including Karl Lagerfeld, Terry Richardson, Jurgen Teller, and Stefane Sednaoui.

Their notorious performances are star-studded, elaborately choreographed spectacles with wardrobe pieces by Jeremy Scott, Hedi Slimane and other top designers.