“I think the Scissor Sisters crossed over because they have a really playful sound and well executed, catchy songs. People say that we should have been as big as them, but to me our project feels more outsiders and although our project is totally ridiculous and I try not to take it too seriously, it feels to me that it has a bit more edge to it. Some people can see it, some don’t. Sonically we’re more severe but in the end, I don’t know what makes people buy things.”
Sitting in the atrium of Liverpool Street’s 5-star Great Eastern Hotel, Warren Fischer smiles as he considers his relative fortune. Hotly tipped and equally reviled as electroclash’s great white hope, his band Fischerspooner were comfortably eclipsed in the pop charts by fellow New York electro types, though five years on he’s both wealthy and free. That’s free in the sense of the commercial restraints so many artists become shackled by with record deals, and free by being the background member of one of the most fashion conscious and flamboyant bands of the decade.
“Casey and I are very different, he’s more concerned with image and I’m more the ‘normal’ guy in the band,” he chuckles. “But I love the way he is and he doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable, though it’s not personally what I’d choose to do.” And free to speak his mind about the music business game the duo have so successfully played.
“The music business as we knew it is now dead. It’s totally gone,” he asserts. “We, as a band, are in a perfect position because we’re still a relatively new name and we have some profile, so we’re in an open market and we have an idea of how we’re going to move ahead,” he suggests, “The signing we did with Capitol to me was the end of an era, a few more acts possibly signed to a major after us, but really all that is now gone.”
Which presumably explains why new single The Greatest Revenge comes out on uber-hip independent French Kitsune, though he sounds surprisingly fatalistic about their chances of mega success. “What’s happening now is that labels are making less and less money and still the press doesn’t say what’s the full story,” says Warren.
“There was a headline on the New York Times recently saying that although Radiohead gave away their new album recently, they let you pay what you wanted, all the money went into their pockets and the album still got to number one in the charts. Sure it went to number one, but it only sold a third of what albums used to sell. It’s actually the worst selling number one ever, and it went to number one because no one else is selling any records. The whole number one thing is meaningless now.
“I have nothing against Radiohead and I’m not saying this to try and make them look bad. What it shows is that people love and respect Radiohead so much that they are going to air or glorify their efforts. People are so interested in finding new strategies but, when you look at it sales are down across the board. There’s a generation of people who are growing up now who are used to music being free and have no guilt about getting free music. Do you think they’d care if EMI is going to get their $10?”
You’re here in London again on a DJing trip, how much is London a special place for you to play: how is it different playing here from anywhere else?
London is an amazing place for music. People seem to care more about music here than anywhere else in the world or rather seem more interested in new music. Londoners pride themselves as being educated and smart about music. We get to play a more challenging style here because the London crowds are so open-minded towards harder music. Of course there are plenty of DJs around who play a lot harder and a lot more obscure stuff than us, but from our perspective it’s still a great opportunity to do something different, as we’re often booked to play to larger and more mainstream crowds.
How much planning and preparation goes into your sets typically: are you spending every single day hunting for tracks, practicing and making sure you can compete effectively with other DJs?
I’m not competitive at all towards other DJs. On the contrary I love to watch other DJs and listen to what they’re playing. In my experience DJs are not really that competitive, if anything they tend to help each other out; everybody’s trying to help each other out, trying to have a good time and play the music they love.
Tommie Sunshine said last week he’s calling his music ‘Armageddon fidget rave. The Armageddon part comes from the fact that I’m living in a country that is at the beginnings of the end.” (3D World, Australia).” What are you calling your music these days?
Oh my God! He definitely prepared for that answer. You catching me off guard here, that’s really for other people to come up with a label.
What have you made of the rise (and fall) of new rave: seen many similarities between new rave and electroclash?
The New Rave thing in the States didn’t really take off as much as it did here, because London is particularly good at disseminating new ideas and consuming them. America is a bigger and slower country, so this trend collapsed over there. I really like the Klaxons but, from a musical perspective there’s not so much to rave about, then again I might not know too much about it. The similarities might be just visual, the impulses are similar, but musically electroclash and new rave are very different.
How do you view the world electroclash: why do you think it inspired such fear and loathing?
Generally speaking, the word ‘Electroclash’ still inspires fear and loathing. What we were doing initially was playing with the idea of electro, a style and a sound that at the time was 25 years old. We considered calling ourselves new electro but then the electroclash moniker came about at that festival and in a way it was good and bad; it created this illusion, this sort of global upheaval. I’d say that it was on some level, because the music kind of shifted around at that point, but the press latched on to it so hard and so fast that the huge musical revolution everybody was expecting to happen never did. We have a love/hate kind of relationship with the term, as you can expect but would I do it differently if I could turn back time? Of course not. It was pretty incredible for us. We never expected our little art performance from Down Town New York to make it so big. Can you imagine going from nothing to being at the centre of the debate? I think if people are arguing, there’s something legitimate happening.”
Were you ever sensitive to criticism: what was the most hurtful thing you read?
I’ve never felt sensitive to criticism. There was something very punk rock about what we were doing, we were trying to do things radically different, so when you’re happy with your outsider status well, some people are going to hate you and others are going to love you. Nothing felt personal to me.
I read about you and Casey rowing a lot when song-writing, how do you manage to keep on going when having massive rows?
That’s partly true, but it’s also something we crafted for our last record… As great as Capitol Records was with us, by giving us all the artistic freedom in the world, by never questioning us and by allowing us to work with whoever we wanted to work with and by giving us all the money to do so, still the agenda on a major label is so classic, so much about ‘the strategy’ of the music and how it connects to certain types of radio formats… so even though they were not forcing us into any directions these discussions were still happening. That adds a very weird marketing, business component to your creative process but it also helped create a stronger dynamic between Casey and I. In a way we felt like it was going to be our first and last chance to work with a major historic label such as Capitol (EMI). We wanted to capitalise on that experience so we crafted our songs, worked on a certain image and talked about the record like it was our tribute to classic rock. One of the classic rock tropes is ‘the struggle in the studio’ element, and that’s how we decided we were going to talk to the press to make the album more traditional in that sense.
What do you think of the way record companies are operating these days?
What the record labels are doing now, and we know this because we’re currently in talks now about these 360 degree deals. What these deals involved is them paying you advances similar to the amounts they were giving bands 10 years ago. The advances are not going up but they’re taking more and more multiple options, in other words you’re guaranteeing to give them five or six records and they want all of your income from your touring, merchandise and all the places that are not affected by these losses from the internet. I would like to warn artists that these deals are absolutely terrible.
Touring was the only area that had not been affected at all, which is why, I think, Madonna signed a record deal with a touring company. Ticket prices are going up, people want to see the artist and you cannot sell that experience over the internet. The record labels are now forced to offer only shitty deals, as these start to happen because bands are likely to accept a $200,000 cheque and the deals collapse, it’s going to create bad blood around which will scare away future artists looking for a deal. There’s no way to turn the tide and it’s only going to accelerate.
I feel this is also going to extend to publishing. So far people don’t like to read books over the internet, but when they’ll find a way that will make it comfortable to download and read say, on top of a hill… first of all you can download pretty much all the classic out of copyrights now, as soon as an interface is invented that industry is also going to collapse. It’s fascinating; culturally it’s such an interesting time. I think in years to come we’ll be looking at the 20th century as the era when artists were treated like royalty.
The movie business is also going to change. In America we don’t have any monarchy but we have movie starts, celebrities… we worship them, they’re attractive, rich, but they don’t contribute to anything, so it’s totally hollow. Don’t get me wrong, I think movies are great, but actors didn’t create the movies, they communicate them. Now, 40% of the movies profits come from DVD sales, I have a small production company and every day we’re ripping DVDs to take scenes used for trailers, so we have the technology as for CDs to select, copy, burn, and give it to all our friends. All these major area of culture production are under a cross fire. It’s good for writers though, because there’s a lot to write about, so you’re perfectly positioned.
Britain’s biggest celebrities right now are Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty: are people in NY aware of them?
Pete Doherty is more known as a character and as Kate Moss’s boyfriend, he plays in a band that nobody’s heard about it… I mean, talking broadly now… I’m sure in big places they know who he is, but if you went to the middle of America they wouldn’t have a clue and if you mention Kate Moss they might say ‘ah, him, the drug addict’!
New York was traditionally the US city were people went to make it (like the Sinatra song ‘if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere’). How much is it still like that? Have you ever considered moving away, what keeps you there?
I think it still is. It’s very expensive though and Manhattan has become a big financial centre, so all the smaller neighbourhoods that had ethnical variety are being pushed out. China Town is pretty much moving out to Queens, Hispanic neighbourhoods are moving to the Bronx; the edginess of the centre of the town is kind of gone. I still love living there though and I wouldn’t live anywhere else and thanks to Ministry Of Sound and Capitol, I can still afford living there.
Fischerspooner’s The Greatest Revenge is out now on Kitsune.
mutta says...
Radiohead are the greatest band to ever live. Great interview