I Am Spoonbender

During a period when pop music was overtaken by uninspired, pedestrian rock and MTV-ready teen bands, bland R&B, and ultra-commercial hip-hop, I Am Spoonbender burst out of the indie underground with a sound so futuristic that it made even the most adventurous of contemporaries seem somehow status quo. Drawing on elements as wildly divergent as B-movie kitsch and avant-garde art and film, from new wave and electro-pop to experimental and electronic interests, the band's music was somehow both backward and forward looking, oddly grounded in the noir-like mood of old-school weird science but going beyond the paranoid razor's-edge of cyberculture toward destinations unknown. Beyond simply a pop band, I Am Spoonbender was a distinct concept. The project was about noticing the beauty and details of objects that most people take for granted in everyday life, finding hidden connections, exploring the subjective nature of reality, and extrapolating meaning from synchronistic or seemingly coincidental occurrences. The theory and philosophy behind the band was born out of the band members' experiences with chance, telepathy, altered states, the occult, psychic phenomena surrounding communication devices, and other extrasensory and paranormal ideas, all of which informed and were informed by the music. Although their esoteric blend was decidedly not commercial, in the conventional sense of the word, I Am Spoonbender helped launch pop music past the trappings of 20th century pop music and into the 21st century.

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