Miss Kitten and the Hacker, Felix The Housecat and Crossover might have entered our consciousness first and Tiga and Zyntherus may have hit the UK charts before them, but when it comes to the royal family of Electroclash, Fischerspooner undisputedly wear the crown.
Apart from anything else, they gave the movement its name, defined its character, in part at least, and, importantly, provided its New York axis, its connection to club kids and the half world of Manhattan sleaze.
So, a year after Felix and Miss Kitten acted as album ambassadors for the cybertrash mission, their royal highnesses have arrived bang on time for the UK's Jubilee celebrations. You wouldn't be surprised if their hefty PR machine began pronouncing 'make way for the real Queen' in all earnestness.
Not only is the hype hot, its also materially weighty. Ministry of Sound were so taken they not only signed the duo and their entourage for a reported $ 2million, but also bought into City Rockers, the label most closely associated with them in the UK.
And their stage show is said to be so elaborate it can't be performed in a normal venue. Which is why tonight half of London's music industry is traipsing to the Bridge, a little known former car park that's been converted into a warehouse venue.
As it happens the three arched, bare brick rooms are perfect for the performance, but it's not at all clear why this show couldn't have been done elsewhere - as indeed it will be when they play the Royal Festival Hall later this summer. As becomes apparent, this is not the super deluxe, pyrotechnic fuelled event the duo are rumoured to operate in New York.
But the hype, half-truths and mistruths are as much part of the Fischerspooner experience as the music.
For example the performance is scheduled to begin at nine. In fact what begins at nine is a 'perhaps' live video link to the dressing room, where the cast is getting ready.
Two hours later a make-up plastered Casey Spooner, looking like a latter day Leigh Bowery, strides up to the camera and asks in affected surprise: 'What? You want me?"
This being London, the crowd responds with a swell of boos, which can of course indicate either approval or disapproval. Having been made to wait for two hours it might not be the former.
But as Casey Spooner leads his troupe of dancers, dressed in towering Eighteenth Century white wigs, on the stage, the audience is pulled into the crisp two four of 'Invisible'.
While the dancers work the front of house, Warren Fisher, the technician of the duo, masterminds the gig from the mixing desk
Having turned out their opening track and won the crowd back, Spooner, looks to the back of the auditorium to address his other half.
"Can we have some more sound in the monitors," he demands in customary fashion. "We can't hear anything up here on stage. It's impossible to lip sync if you can't hear yourself."
As the laughter ripples through the crowd, so does the realisation that he's not joking. The whole thing really is mimed. Fischerspooner don't do live and to prove it Spooner deliberately mimes out of time for a passage of 'Emerge'.
The technical ability, co-ordination and timing is genius. There are no microphones, so everything Spooner, says is pre-recorded, every action pre-determined with extreme precision.
At one point he announces he needs to get over to an adjacent stage quickly and the quickest way is to crowd surf.
Stage diving is always risky (I remember once seeing a certain guitarist dive into the crowd while it rapidly parted), but relying on a crowd to pass you from one side of the room to the other in-time to a pre-recorded voice track is surely asking for trouble.
Not only does he do it, he then repeats the performance to get back to the main stage.
As a performance it's pretty stunning, but it's also a self-parodying fake. When Les Rhythm Digital did the same thing a few years ago it produced divided and extreme reactions and some here tonight are similarly disappointed.
On the one hand it's the logical step-on from Leigh Bowery's exaggerated fashion and it's everything Steve Strange wished to do with Visage before it was technically possible. But, as Dot Allison might say, in the end you feel in need of some substance.
It's original, absorbing and amusing, but as one industry insider commented. "I was frankly a bit staggered when Ministry offered all that money for them".
