I have a fairly scattered music collection that I’ve been trying over the years to condense with limited success. Several years ago, I purchased Fischerspooner’s #1 album for the lone song “Emerge,” and after playing that single repeatedly for days I somehow managed to lose the physical CD in the boxes of discs that languish under rabid hordes of dust bunnies in the furthest recesses of the bedroom.

This wouldn’t normally be a problem because I rip every CD I get so that there is a digital copy floating around for just such emergencies. Regrettably, these digital backups only exist so far as the computer’s memory, and suffices to say that when the computer takes its last wracked breath so do the digital tracks. Such was my luck…

It was my own fault – I should have made a hard drive backup somewhere, but I was young and neglected it in favor of blind faith in the Fates. A most terrible move. Never trust the Fates. They and Murphy not only appear to share the same bed, they also seem to enjoy the crunching sound they make as they trod on people’s dreams.

Digressing…

Anyway, #1 was lost not only physically but also in the emotional turmoil of trying to scavenge a computer’s corpse for identifiable data. Years passed, the world spun, more music entered my collection… Lots more. And then one day while browsing for something to listen to I literally blurted the word “Emerge!”

My coworker luckily seems to think very little of my oddities, so the incident slid by quietly (outside of my initial blurt).

End result: a full scale incursion into dust bunny heartland in a vain attempt to retrieve a fallen comrade. Unfortunately, the disk couldn’t be found. A string of expletives followed.

And then it struck me. The beater computer!

Lo and behold, crammed away in the overloaded memory of a $300 Compaq notebook sat my files. Somehow a chunk of my previous music library had made it to the intermediate system and I hadn’t even known. It’s part of the mystique of computers how things just seem to happen (and not happen).

But silicon aside, my love has been rekindled.

“Emerge” brings back all kinds of memories… First time I heard “Emerge” was via YouTube and I believe it was my first true encounter with glam artists. The song itself makes very little sense – like they do these days – so it was the beat, the conviction (I just stole that usage from Julia Child), and the artists half-cracked performance that impressed so much.

It’s electronic, and fast electronic at that, so synth haters shouldn’t even take a second glance (In fact you may just want to skip my articles altogether), but aside from the well placed outlandish sounds and occasional accenting muted instrumentals this song somehow manages to project a mental image of exactly what it’s creators envisioned. No joke – listen to the tract and imagine what kind of a video it would be, and then go to YouTube and actually watch it. This obviously isn’t the first song to do this, but I think the fact that the limited lyrics and the tone of the track alone manage to put your mind exactly where Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner intended is reason for appreciation.

This is a bit of a surgical article because the rest of the songs on the album didn’t impress me in the least. After “Emerge” I was very hopeful the album would be outstanding (the reason I had the CD special ordered) but alas, it was not meant to be.

Odyssey was a much better album overall so I’ll have to cover it later, but in the mean time go get an introduction to “Emerge” and let me know what you think.

Fischerspooner… Nom nom nom nom.

Pairing?

Red Bull and vodka. This song oozes caffeine.