Chicks on Speed
| Chicks on Speed | |
|---|---|
| Origin | Munich, Germany |
| Genres | Electroclash, electropop |
| Years active | 1997–present |
| Labels | Chicks on Speed Records K Records |
| Website | Official site |
| Members |
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| Past members |
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Chicks on Speed is a music and fine art ensemble, formed in Munich in 1997, when members Australian Alex Murray-Leslie and New Yorker Melissa Logan met at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.
Though Chicks on Speed reached cult status throughout the 2000s as catalysts of the musical genre electroclash, Chicks on Speed were actually founded as a multidisciplinary art group working in performance art, electronic dance music, collage graphics, textile design and fashion.
Melissa Logan and Alex Murray-Leslie were art students at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, when they met in 1997 at one of the Academy's parties. Murray-Leslie founded an illegal bar called "Maria Bar" in 1994 with friends Barbara and Karl Fritsch, changing its name to "Seppi Bar" in 1996 (a nomadic ArtBar around Munich, lasting 3 years) It was a project based on the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich where the Dada artists met and performed. It was here that Murray-Leslie invited Logan and Lisa Walker to join Seppi Bar in 1997. Logan and Murray-Leslie began working as a group at Seppi Bar to create art exhibitions and host illegal parties. Logan and Murray-Leslie then met Kiki Moorse (a member until 2006 now on Toffeetones Records), and invited her to join Chicks on Speed. In this period, Murray-Leslie worked with Upstart at Ultraschall, a Techno Nightclub working the door, curating live-art events and interior media art installations. This meeting with Upstart (Label owner of Disko B) would see the medium of music merge with the Chicks' multimedia explorations.
Chicks on Speed created an live-art piece named I Wanna Be A DJ...Baby!. They stood behind DJ decks and smashed records while a sound collage tape was playing. For this project they also put together a "box set" with a T-shirt, a cassette, a paper record and a fake interview for their "band". During this time they met Upstart (a.k.a. Peter Wacha) of Disko B record label who joined their freshly started record label, Go Records, which later become Chicks on Speed Records with Jeurgen Söder. Go Records was a suicide label—the release numbers started at 10 and went down to zero; the motto was, perhaps what is wrong with the world is that things are made to grow & get bigger. The 10 releases were primarily limited edition 7" and 10" records that sold out fast.
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