Multinational electro-pop/multimedia collective
Live / DJ
Chicks on Speed (CoS) is a multinational electro-pop/multimedia collective for music, performance, design and visual arts, founded at The Academy of Fine Art, Munich in the late 1990s as a performance project.
CoS today consists of US-born Melissa E. Logan (from upstate New York), who lives in Berlin, and Australian Alex Murray-Leslie (born Bowral, Australia), who lives in Trondheim. The duo cross lines and build new groups and are direct descendants of bauhaus, Fluxus, SI and created Electroclash in the last milenia.
The international art band hurls politics and art theory over repetitive beats and electronica with skewed catchiness and poetic intensity. Swerving into experimental improv and sinking into electro pop, ever retaining their avant-garde edge.
The band has flirted with the dance charts with songs like; We Don't Play Guitars, Fashion Rules! And Good Weather Girl, all of which have been cult hits in German, Singaporean and Australian dance charts. They have released five studio albums and numerous EPs.
Chicks on Speed are Fluxus, DADA & KLF driven with a music biz edge, utilizing parody and fashion. They have collaborated with international personalities from the art, music and fashion industries such as Karl Lagerfeld, B-52's, Tom Tom Club, Jeremy Scott/artistic director for Moschino & ORLAN and have been on tour with bands such as Kraftwerk, NEU! or the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Art performances and exhibitions followed, for example in the Palais de Tokyo, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the MoMA in New York and the Center Pompidou in Paris.
As part of composing their visionary style of music, CoS have invented state of the art sound sculptures and wearable tech they call 'Objektinstruments'. The group's collaborative and solo works have been presented internationally across a stunning range of cultural contexts, from major museums, to rock ’n’ roll tours, to global fashion cat walks (Balenciaga, Saint Laurent and Chanel).
When they take a break they sleep in a lab and record their dreams which are sonified into endless songs.
Alex Murray-Leslie she’s Professor of Digital Performance, Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. As part of Alex’s artistic research, she develops augmented musical instruments for experimental performances in the field of teleprovisation.
Melissa E. Logan produces music, plays saxophone, her heavy on the low end, synth solo project is VooCha, she is founder of UniCAT Label & Publishing Berlin.
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