Fischerspooner: The wages of synth

My encounter with Fischerspooner takes place in the lobby of an impossibly hip hotel in one of the world's great cities (it doesn't matter which). Casey Spooner, singer and lyricist, sweeps out of the lifts, looking fabulous in full Maori warpaint and a vintage Cossack uniform. He's followed by the muso-producer Warren Fischer, face and body painted entirely in metallic green, wearing nothing but an armoured platinum kilt.

Let's pretend that all of the above is true. Let's pretend that Casey isn't sporting a rumpled polo shirt and reading glasses, that Warren isn't dressed conservatively in checked shirt and jeans, and that the hotel isn't the Great Eastern in the City of London. Fischerspooner's mantra of "Fake it until you make it" has got them this far, and if it's good enough for them, why not for us?

When you engage with Fischerspooner, you enter the land of make-believe. Facts and conjecture elide, and spirals of rumours, Chinese whispers and lies, gleefully assisted by the band themselves, reach ever more hilarious heights with each interview.

The basics are as follows: Fischerspooner are the performance art/synth-pop/fashion duo at the forefront of the risibly named electroclash movement, and have just been signed by Ministry of Sound for a very large sum indeed. Beyond that, amid the mist of hype and counter-hype, only a few core certainties exist. Warren Fischer was born in Los Angeles, the son of an opera singer and a neurologist. Chubby, tousled and un-starlike, he is married with a daughter, and happy to lurk in the shadows while Casey becomes the "celebutante".

Casey's background is more hick, but no less bourgeois: born in Athens, Georgia, to an interior designer and a lawyer. With a fine bone structure, a gym-hardened body, a quick wit, and a mania for being the centre of attention, he's a born performer. They met at the Chicago Institute of Art, where they collaborated on performance-art projects. Fischer moved to New York and went into film production, making unsatisfying but lucrative commercials. Spooner followed, but flitted from job to job while "doing unwatchable performance art that was fun for me. I'm doing the same thing now, but I've changed the emphasis and added a backbeat to it".

Unemployed and broke, Casey examined his options. "I thought, I like to travel, don't want to go to an office, I wanna wear clothes, go to parties, work out... That's a model! So I started calling photographers, saying 'I'm a model'! It worked. I sublet my apartment, got a co-worker to give me some money and bought a ticket to Milan..."

But Milan didn't match his expectations. "I thought I would meet a photographer and we would become this synthesis of photography and performance. Of course, it wasn't like that at all. You're just a wardrobe rack." He wound up in Munich doing catalogue work. Realising the game was up, he returned to Manhattan.

Inadvertently, Casey's brush with the catwalk had helped him realise what he did want to do. "I knew I was a performer, but I wasn't an actor – I couldn't create emotional reality. But I could pose. I knew I could make an image. Ironically, now I am basically a model. But I choose the wardrobe."

Warren, meanwhile, had been making serious electronica and playing in going-nowhere indie bands. The duo decided to reunite under the name Fischerspooner, combining Casey's newly honed stagecraft with Warren's musical know-how. The original concept, somewhat ironically, was a savage satire of electropop. "At first," Warren explains, "it was just a reaction: 'electronic pop music sucks!' Then I learnt that it has its own beauty."

They played their first show in Starbucks and found themselves quickly adopted by New York's arts community. In order to fund their increasingly spectacular shows, they managed to scam ever- greater amounts of corporate sponsorship. Fischerspooner, with a live show that typically features up to 20 dancers, glitter cannons, pyrotechnics, artificial snow and wind machines, are experts at spending other people's money.

The show is 100 per cent mimed, a fact that has caused outrage among rock purists. But they make a virtue of it: at their London debut, Casey's opening words were, "Warren, press Play so we can rock this mother out!", followed by "Turn the monitors up – I can't even hear to lip-synch." It seems to be a direct challenge to the fraudulent ideas of authenticity in the traditional rock show.

At present, their main benefactor is James Palumbo, the man behind Ministry of Sound. The duo won't confirm the exact figure, but it keeps rising. Surely they're laughing all the way to the bank? "It's not as dramatic as people think," insists Warren. "There's been a lot of exaggeration."

Ministry is funding a live show with the production values of a Kylie/Madonna spectacular but with none of the sales to back it up. So far, they've made the top 10 in Germany, but nowhere else. If they ever sell significant quantities here, it'll be fun to watch: Casey has threatened "If we do Top of the Pops, I'll wet my pants on camera."

Ah yes, the records. Fischerspooner's debut album, #1, is a nine-song suite of darkly addictive electropop, reminiscent of Soft Cell, DAF and Kraftwerk. The first words, or thereabouts, are "Nature vs Man/Man vs Nature". An Apollonian declaration of intent?

"I tried to pick subject matters that worked against electronic music," says Spooner. "I was sick of hearing about futuristic porno robots, that dull techno content, so I used nature as a touchstone."

What are Fischerspooner bringing to the world that it didn't already have? "Almost nothing," they chorus. "We just like to mine clichés." An example would presumably be their debut single. Casey describes "Emerge", as "...an anthem about positivity and empowerment. It also relates to the way we were always described as 'emerging artists', struggling to get out of the underground. You don't have to start in the underground – start somewhere else."

If Fischerspooner were ever underground, they've left it far behind. Their "don't dream it, be it" ethic has borne fruit, and conceptualised success has translated into reality. Not that they live it 24/7, hence today's casual gear. Doesn't Casey ever walk the streets looking like Casey from Fischerspooner? "Never. It's too much work. I don't have the time, the energy or the staff."

When he's "in character", however, Casey finds himself regularly propositioned, but tends not to accept. "I'm too freaked out. You're acting sexy onstage, but afterwards I feel like I've just come from a war. It's odd because I don't think I could be more unappealing. But maybe that's attractive. If I have the confidence to be so cavalier onstage and get nearly naked... I'm sure it's not my actual package." Warren snorts, and says: "Don't fool yourself!"

It goes to show: if Fischerspooner crashes and burns, he could always resume modelling. After all, he'd be offered contracts now purely because of who he is...

Casey Spooner looks confused for a second, then asks: "Who am I?"

'Emerge' is released 8 July on FS Studios