Fischerspooner brings theatrics to Pageant Thursday
St. Louis audiences will get their first chance to see the flamboyant spectacle that is Fischerspooner this Thursday at the Pageant. They are doing their first U.S. tour in five years.
For the last two years, the group that helped create the ‘electroclash’ movement has worked on their new album, Entertainment, and corresponding stage show, “Between Worlds.”
“This is not like any show we have done before,” co-founder and showman Casey Spooner said last month.
“The songs of the current album and other songs from our catalog are set against a visual and sonic collage (of) literary and historical sources and theatrical traditions. It becomes a very American story about ambition, experimentation, danger and the frontier.”
Commingling art, fashion, theater and music, expect the group to present to the crowd hairy monsters, feathered chorus girls spitting blood and glitter showers. Oh, and the actual music? Their pulsating electropop gems stand up on their own, worthy of inclusion in your library alongside Depeche Mode, Massive Attack and Daft Punk.
I recently caught up with Spooner on his cell as he was briefly locked out of his building in NYC.
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RC: How did you get into electronic music?
CS: I studied visual art and my mom was an art teacher at my school. I did some printmaking, ceramics, metalsmith work and painting - though my teachers always said that my descriptions were better than my paintings. Then I did some experimental theater in Chicago. (While attending the School of the Art Institute), Warren (Fischer) and I were working on a film soundtrack. We ended up exploring rights-free sample CDs and that’s where it all started.
RC: What can we expect at the show?
CS: It’s all about performance, lighting, video, dance, costumes and set pieces. There’s no band in the show but we have a ‘mission control’ where music tracks and other elements are prepped. It’s a visual presentation that’s pretty weird — like an experimental pop show.
RC: Should the crowd dress up and get into it as well?
CS: Absolutely, yeah! That’s the reason we do it — I want to be entertained by the crowd just as much as they are by us.
FISCHERSPOONER with SSION and organicArma
8 pm Thursday, Pageant, $20
Click here for our full event listing.
http://www.myspace.com/fischerspooner


