Fisherspooner- Pursuing Pleasure is an Important Issue
Author: Benedetta Ferraro
Monday, May 6, 2002
Fisherspooner frontman Casey Spooner met up with Skrufff's Benedetta Ferraro last summer when "electroclash" didn't exist and when the debut album of his 16 piece New York combo "1" was just another semi obscure electro album. 9 months on, he's the media's unashamed frontman of the most hyped clubbing trend since hard house followed trance, new electro, or electroclash as NME like to say. Financially, too, he's also likely to be in the money, reputedly earning a £2million advance from Ministry for the simple honour of re-releasing the very same album. 9 months ago though, he was staying in a small, almost modest hotel in South Kensington though even then, modesty was not his strongest suit.
Skrufff: Your biog describes Fisherspooner as being a means to 'explore newly classic themes of nature'; what does it mean-
Fisherspooner (Casey Spooner): "It could just mean a lot of bullshit, right- Nature is just a great tool for subject matter, because I really hate pop stars constantly talking about their great personal difficulties in life. I try to incorporate anything that relates to nature within each song, and if I ever get stuck creatively, I always start from there. Nature is a universal reference point that relates to all of us working in our collective, but ultimately it relates to every human being. Pop music to me is a device to communicate larger, more unusual ideas. As a rule, I tent to take on these kinds of limitations to force myself into doing more unusual things."
Skrufff: How does this concept fit into electronic music-
Fisherspooner: "Well, to me it fits perfectly because I've always hated the constant use of 'I'm a robot, you're a robot' type themes in electronic music. It is interesting to use subjects directly in antithesis to that. Nature is not a 'pure and isolated' paradise with no connection to human kind. We are nature, and all we create and produce is part of it. Electronic music is therefore natural."
Skrufff: How did you put your 18 member collective together-
Fisherspooner: "The number of people we work with always changes and rotates. Some of them have worked with us consistently from the beginning, but because this is an ongoing project, people tend to come and go according to their availability or interest in the idea we are working on. The core of it is however myself and Warren (Fisher), we went to art school together in Chicago, then we just happened to be living in New York at the same time. He had stopped making music, whereas I thought he should be making it again. It all started back in '98 when we were given the opportunity to make a song for a fashion video. We ended up forgetting about the video and made a completely different song that turned into a performance. From that moment on, both the media and people responded immediately to it, so we started adding different ideas and developing them as we went along."
Skrufff: How do people approach you if they're interested in working with you-
Fisherspooner: "Some of them just come up to us, some of them are friends… Our rule is, as long as they're enthusiastic, that's all it takes to be involved. When someone comes up and has great ideas, I always meet and talk with them, if there's an opportunity then I try to give them a chance. We give them parameters, but there are no real limitations. Since these people don't get paid, for them it's just an opportunity to play and be creative without having to follow any rules."
Skrufff: How did you end up making electronic dance music-
Fisherspooner: "We were never inspired by Britney or Whitney or Christina or any of that stuff. When we first started, I was interested in Bollywood musicals. The first song we wrote had Bollywood samples and it was about a di Tags