Electronic Music 411 - Chicks on Speed - Girls, electronic musi, new instruments

I'm going to be posting a few of the interviews i did last year... hopefully they might provide a little enjoyment to someone out there :D .. first one is with Alex Murray Leslie from Chicks On Speed

---------------------------------------

I have to confess I’m a bit of a fan – Chicks on Speed do exactly the kind of thing I love, mixing their sexy and sassy electronic tracks with art, style and modern cultural observations. What I didn’t know is that there is much more to Chicks On Speed than their music.

“Chicks On Speed is a multimedia performance project,” says Alex Murray Leslie, the Australian born member of the female collective. “We’re a big clan of different women making fashion and music, we also create art shows and installations in museums, and fashion collaborations with clothing brands such as Insight.”

“When you’re a band, or an art group, you always work with so many people. Although, Melissa Logan and myself are the core of the group, we always have many friends and co-writers helping out.”

With so many projects in the pipeline, these girls seem to have their fingers in every pie. How do they find the time, energy and inspiration to do it all?

“I think it’s really important to stretch an idea as far as it can go to get it across the different platforms and genres,” says Alex. “We always think one idea exists in many different worlds. It’s not just an idea for a piece of fashion, that idea might go from a textile print to a video. We don’t feel fulfilled unless the idea goes the full way.”

So ideas don’t seem to be a problem for these women, and Chicks On Speed have always had very astute ideas about what it means to be a woman today. Alex says that they take inspiration from all around them female identity is a huge part of that.

“You’re reading a lot and reacting to society at large around you, and reacting off that. Yes, our subject does tend to be women, whether they are glamour girls, divas or fashion victims. I think this is because we are women and we feel close to many of those themes going on.”

Our conversation wanders to art installations and creations, and how this has gradually worked its way into the music, and their new album Cutting The Edge.

“Cutting The Edge was made over the last two years. We don’t tend to work like a normal band in which you just go into the studio and record and the album is done. We really incorporate our musical research and development and then record. In one case, we set up a recording studio inside part of an art installation and recorded a song in it. For some other songs we recorded in a hotel room in New York, as part of the MOMA show we did there. Recording, for us, really is this process that becomes part of the everyday.”

The girls, frustrated by pre-created sounds that most synths contain, made their own electronic instruments for the album. In typical Chicks On Speed style, these sounds were not only new and unusual, but one piece even incorporated fashion and art.

“We made a high heel shoe-tar, and amplified scissors and rocks. We also made self contained entertainment systems as hats, so you could run around your home and give a concert.”

“We used them all on the album, but the most interesting one I think is being created right now. We collaborated with the Victorian tapestry workshop on a huge tapestry that is a Theremin. It has copper threads woven in that then get connected to sound units. We will be using this onstage with special choreographed movements and triggered sounds.”

“I think making the sounds ourselves was, for us, a really new way of working. I think with every record we try to push the boundaries and work in a different way. The music has never been the main project, it’s just one of many in the Chicks On Speed universe. The fashion and art are also very important in what we do.”

Strong, intelligent women are few and far between in popular music, and men seem to catch the attention in the more experimental areas. I ask Alex where all the talented females are?

“I think there are many women doing amazing stuff, and that’s why our project, Girl Monster, exists. There is a real under appreciation of women in things like music festivals, the quotas are a bit shameful!”

“Maybe its something to do with men not watching what the women are doing, but the women are aware of what the guys are doing, and we are trying to change that a little bit. Open the mens’ eyes a little! We are just saying, ‘It’s really cool and it’s okay to be into womens’ music’.”

“And the Girl Monster Project has evolved. It’s gone from a CD, to a series of interviews and then into live events. We have been doing programming of some big festivals, and we would love to take it on tour here in Australia, like a Girl Monster stage at the The Big Day Out or something”

“By creating the project Girl Monster it lets us support other women in the music world and give them a platform. For some reason what women are doing in music does not get reported by the press, and so much of it is amazing and so much more interesting than what the guys are doing.” She says with a laugh.