CHICKS
ON SPEED ARE:
Alex
Murray-Leslie
Kiki
Moorse
Melissa Logan
DISCOGRAPHY
Albums
99
Cents
Chicks
on Speed Will Save Us All
The
Rereleases of the Unreleases
Singles
Wordy
Rappinghood
We
Don't Play Guitars
Fashion
Rules
The
Chicks on Speed/ Kreidler Sessions
Chix-52
Kaltes
Klares Wasser
Glamour
Girl
Warm
Leatherette
Euro
Trash Girl
Mind
Your Own Business
REVIEWS
Live
Islington
Academy
different for me. Maybe it's because they were the first, but their brand of ragged round the edges electro, fused with a DIY punk ethic and lyrics that flit between savage, childlike and furiously political hits me in places that the cold mechanical stylings of the rest can't reach. In short, CoS add a distinctly human touch to the robotic world of electronica. And their efforts to spread their vision of multi-disciplined creativity and political activism continue with the release of new LP '99 Cents'.
'Its a pop concept album, and we want to infiltrate the mainstream in our way,' says Alex Murray-Leslie, one part of the three headed CoS collective, along with Melissa Logan & Kiki Moorse, 'There's not enough good music being represented on your TV set!'
'99 Cents' will be CoS' first album since 2000's
'Chicks on Speed Will Save Us All', but they've hardly been resting on
their laurels, working instead on numerous collaborations, art exhibitions
and fashion projects, and developing their own Chicks on Speed Records
imprint;
'We've
been doing a new record with Cristian Vogel, we've DJ'd at fashion week
for Odeal, and Pelagique, played about 3 shows a week all over Europe,
toured USA and Australia 3 times, made a book called "chicks on speed:its
a project" to be released late this year, designed 3 new collections
for our web shop, signed 3 new artists on our label: Angie Reed, Kevin
Blechdom and Ana Da Silva (from The Raincoats) exhibited at Von Rot in
Berlin and plan to play at Art Basel Miami in December with Deitch galleries!!!!
It's a constant mess, sometimes we have to focus more on one project at
a time, but never for too long. We have other responsibilities now and
we have to maintain many projects at one time.' And this
multi-tasking is one of the things that makes CoS so fascinating; each piece of work feeding into the next to produce one huge multi faceted project; 'We recently made a song with Cristian Vogel called 'Class War!'; the song was based on the differences between the first and third world, and the reliance of the first world on the 3rd for slave labour to maintain its level of wealth and cheap consumption. We designed a print
for fabric, we showed it to Jeremy Scott and he loved it, so we made a collection of overalls with him called "Overalls for All". The 35 pairs that we have made are not for sale, just for usage in installations and live CoS performances. Tomorrow we will go to the Shedhalle in Zurich to do a lecture, the day after we will do the performance "Overalls for All" with 15 actors in the gallery space. The pattern for the overalls will also be included in the book for everyone to make their own
bastardised version of them!'
And this sentiment
is one that runs throughout Chicks on Speed's work; it's about getting
as many people involved in the creative process as possible. They even
included instructions on how to make one of their paper dresses on the
sleeve of '...Will Save Us All, but do they consider themselves as icons?
'This would be an honour if it would be true! We do believe in supporting
women through our record label, we really want to build our company up,
so it can act as a creative catalyst for other young artists.'
And for all those
young artists out there, Alex has these words of advice:
'Don't stay
at art school too long, its important to get out and experience the real
world and learn from professionals or artists who practice every day in
their fields, a young person can learn a lot more that way than being
locked in an art school for 6 years, that's dangerous and one can get
lazy!'
Go and see Chicks on Speed live, listen to their albums, and go and see their exhibitions. Be inspired, then go and create something yourself and inspire someone else. It's what they'd want.
Interview by Paul Madden