CHICKS ON SPEED

About two years ago, a strange 7-inch appeared from Munich, with artwork
that recalled black-and-white cutout punk sleeves of the late 70s.
Enclosed was the debut release by three women who met behind the Art
Academy in Munich in 1997 and started an art project that eventually
merged into the medium of music.

Produced with Munich's Giorgio Moroder-obsessed sequencer phreak DJ Hell,
the record combined a hilarious parody/homage to the
won't-take-yes-for-an-answer East Village-girl punk sensibilities of Kim
Gordon (or Polystyrene of X Ray Spex in an earlier British context) with
the sawtooth 909 stylings of Hell and his International Deejay Gigolos
posse. This was soon followed by a double 7-inch, recorded with Viennese
Cheap label prankster Gerhard Potuznik and included a bonus platter which
featured Ed DMX doing hardcore punk renditions of electro classics like
"Planet Rock".

The women behind these mysterious projects were New York export Melissa
Logan, Munich resident Kiki Moorse, and Australian Alex Murray-Leslie.
Melissa had been studying painting and Kiki was working on jewelry. Kiki
then started a club, the Seppi Bar, which lasted about a year. The
'chicks' then decided to make "fake music," as they call it, under the
name Chicks On Speed and what has followed has gained them attention from
labels such as Mego, Disko B, and Breakin' (for whom they've done cover
art on a number of releases, including the amazing cover for the recent
Jim O'Rourke/Pita/Peter Rehberg project, The Amazing Sound of Fenno'berg)
as well as electronic music listeners fed up to the teeth with the often
portentous, unsmiling visage of the IDM (Intelligent Dance Music)
community. Their later singles speak to the range of their musical
talents.

"Glamour Girl," a 10-inch released on their Go imprint features the
memorable lyrics: "Fashion victim on the air/ I shaved off all of my pubic
hair/ Sometimes they think I'm vermin / I've got more faces than Cindy
Sherman". One side is a nontedious DHQ reminiscent rendition, the other a
piece of delightful Eurotrash disco produced with analog flaneur
Christopher Just. Other singles include a cover of the 1979 Delta 5 punk
classic done with floor scraping guitar riffs and a whining analog howl
("Mind Your Own Business") and "Kaltes Klares Wasser," an analog punk gem
with the energy of a supernova. Their live show in London last October
prompted the New Musical Express to proclaim it the best gig of the year,
the sort of praise not usually forthcoming from that hyper-cynical rag.
Their full-length album was to follow, hot on the heels of the new B52
covers project called "Chix 52." With an ambitious title, "Chicks on Speed
Will Save Us All", this album began to attract international attention for
the band. Available in the states only as an import, this record compiled
many of the songs previously released in the single format along with some
newer material. The sound was crisp, distorted, and incredibly precise.
This record has gained them comparisons as varied as Suicide to
Einsturzende Neubauten. Boasting a modest sum of over 15,000 copies sold
in Europe alone, this prompted the release of "The Unreleases" which was
limited to 1,000 copies and was not even available as an import in the
states. This was again a collection of previous musical work along with
snippets of interviews and sound bites and is scheduled to be their first
domestic release on K records this fall.

In an interview in Jockey Slut, Logan points out that "there are too many
musicians already in music, we started off as an art project, and the
music came later." Punk has always been about attitude. And electronic
music's bedroom studio aesthetic is historically analogous to punk's "if
they can play, so can we" lo-fi approach. Chicks on Speed is truly a
postmodern example of the DIY ethic.