Nov. 16, 2005 - Issue #526: Sex, Lust & Love

Ceci n’est pas un band

Sure, they make music, but German art collective Chicks on Speed insist they're so much more than just a band

Those of you who have shelled out $18 in anticipation of hearing German electro divas Chicks on Speed play this Monday (November 21) might be slightly perplexed to hear what head Chick Kiki Moorse has to say about her music.

“We are not a band,” Moorse states flatly from her hotel room in Hollywood. “We’re a group of people who create all kinds of art and work together on a lot of different projects, one of which is a musical group.”

Okay... but surely the music side of Chicks on Speed is where most of the attention is focused—I mean, most “art collectives” don’t release albums and tour the world supporting them if music is merely a small facet of their work, do they?

“We get asked all the time what our main occupation is by North Americans,” Moorse says. “Over here people seem to think only of the music, but in Europe people seem to be aware that we’re doing a lot of art and fashion things as well.”

Fair enough. While audiences on this side of the pond tend to associate Chicks on Speed exclusively with their danceable, catchy take on electroclash, the group actually has their fingers in an awful lot of pies, musical and otherwise. Moorse met fellow Chicks Alex Murray-Leslie and Melissa Logan while all three were students at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in the mid-’90s. The girls found a job working part-time at art galleries hanging paintings and setting up installations, working at such a feverishly efficient pace that someone remarked that they reminded him of “chicks on speed.” The name stuck, and soon Moorse, Murray-Leslie and Logan were creating their own art installations, including a piece entitled “I Wanna Be a DJ” that featured the Chicks standing behind DJ decks smashing records while a sound collage played in the background. For this project, the girls even put together a press kit, with a paper record and a fake interview for their as yet imaginary band. This cheeky irreverence caught the eye of electroclash producer Peter Wacha, a.k.a. Upstart, who signed Chicks on Speed to his Disko B record label, launching their musical career. The musical aspect of Chicks on Speed’s artistic output has certainly been their most commercially successful venture, but Moorse is quick to highlight some of her group’s other ongoing projects.

“The music is only a part of what we’re doing,” she insists. “We did a lot of art shows in the last year and now we’re just about to launch a fashion line with a huge exhibition at the fashion museum in London.”

Of course, putting out a branded clothing line isn’t exactly the most underground of endeavours for a musical group to pursue (Hillary Duff has a line of clothes; the Velvet Underground do not), although Moorse doesn’t see this move as being too contradictory.

“The clothes are very Chicks on Speed—they’re very, um, loud,” she laughs. “But I can see how people could see it that way; it’s another wall that has to come down.”

Breaking down walls seems to be a common theme throughout the Chicks’ history. While often thought of as a feminist band, Chicks on Speed have actually faced scathing criticism from feminists because of their ironic, post-modern take on sexual politics (“We were once part of a feminist panel in Britain, and a lot of the women in the audience were really angry at us for not being more serious about feminism,” Moorse reports), and, paradoxically, anti-feminist audiences have reacted antagonistically, even violently, to the group, especially during the Chicks’ stint opening for the Red Hot Chili Peppers on their recent world tour.

“On that tour we were playing in front of like 60,000 people, and it seemed like there were maybe 1,000 hooligans who didn’t like us at every show who were throwing bottles at us,” Moorse explains. “But there were also a lot of people who seemed to enjoy us, too, so you can’t just walk offstage because of a few idiots. The Chili Peppers are actually very nice people and were very embarrassed about the whole thing—I think they are sort of sad about some of the people their music seems to appeal to.”

Chicks on Speed have also occasionally been perplexed by the make-up of their audience. “As we got more popular we felt like people weren’t really getting it,” Moorse says. “We got invited on to Top of the Pops and asked to play these mega-raves in Germany where people had what was obviously a very inaccurate idea of who we are.”

So, then, who are Chicks on Speed? A serious, feminist-minded, post-modern arts collective, or just an ironic joke being played on the music-buying public?

“Lately journalists have been asking us ‘is this a joke or are you a serious band?’” Moorse laughs. “I mean, god, we’ve been doing this seven years now, and of course it’s fun, but we’ve worked really hard, too. Believe me, we’re not a joke.” V

Chicks on Speed
With DJ Nik7 • New City • Mon, Nov 21

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