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Femme factory >> Chicks on Speed bruise and confuse art as we know it by LORRAINE CARPENTER
Mirror:
So your sound was once described as “fake music,” a term you
seemed to embrace. What does it mean to you? Melissa Logan:
Well, we thought we were being really tongue-in-cheek making jokes about
playback, using the mini-disc, and then we realized that most live music
is done that way. We didn’t know how real it was. Alex Murray-Leslie:
I think “fake music” goes against specialization and the idea
of professionalism, so you’re stating something while questioning
its authenticity. It’s like you can’t do it yourself, or maybe
you can but you’re pretending you can’t… (laughs). The
term really came from the fact that we were a fake band, and we really
were in the beginning. We just wanted to be an art project, so we started
by making a box that contained all kinds of objects to do with being
a band, including a tape of some chopped-up collage music. M: But music
has become your primary focus? AM: No, no, no, not at all. Music is only one very small element of what we’re doing. We’re also running the record label—we now have three artists, DAT Politics, Le Tigre and Sylvester Boy, so it’s a lot of work to keep that running. And there are different exhibitions we’re in, and we’re making clothes to supply shops in different cities, so we’re like a little factory, really.
We have a technical M: Speaking
of Le Tigre, their deal is using electronics as opposed to guitars,
showing that women can operate machinery while rejecting the typically
male rock format. Considering you have a song called “We Don’t
Play Guitars,” is your choice of gear equally political? AM: Yeah,
I think it’s telling men to get off the stage with their guitars
and get into something else. I’m saying men because it usually
is men wanking around, isn’t it, and we don’t need to see
that anymore. The song is really targeted towards America because rock
is so unbelievably important there, and it seems they’re wanting
to create their icons again. Kiki Moorse:
When the electronic thing really started here in Europe, in the late
’80s and early ’90s, it came with a political movement as
well, it was like a small revolution, so using electronics and computers
to make music is becoming standard, I must say. What’s definitely
new and different is to use it in such a rock way, the way we use it.
Electronic musicians are very calm behind their laptops, whereas we
do a real rock show, but with electronic devices. ML: But
you tend to get into the gear that’s around you. Like, there’s
this company Abelton that made a really good program called Live and
we’re trying it out, you know, but they’re our next door neighbours.
So you have to be surrounded by it, and if there are people down the
road who play guitar, then I guess one might play with them. M: Would
you go rock if the mood struck you? ML: We would
maybe incorporate it just to contradict ourselves (laughs). It’s
really fun doing “We Don’t Play Guitars” though. At our
soundcheck in Iceland, we were testing some really hardcore samples
from the song on our little machines and there were some guys tuning
their guitars and they made these faces, like, “Oh God, what am
I doing with this guitar? These chicks on stage are way louder and more
hardcore.” This way is just cleaner and more fun, but the amount
of energy that goes into learning and playing a riff is equal to working
out how one’s gonna sample, what one’s gonna sample, who you’re
gonna find to play with you. I’d say learning how to use new programs,
even though we get people to help us, is definitely more difficult than
picking up an instrument that has a thousand books written about it.
Live just came out a year and a half ago and there are still bugs in
it. AM: It’s
exciting, it’s really new terrain. The guys at Abelton actually
made the software for people doing Mille Plateaux sort of music, or
just playing loops in and out, so we’re the first band who wanted
to use it this way on stage. It’s quite risky. M: What
else are you cooking up, gear-wise? AM: One thing we want to do is develop cable-less equipment because it’s so ugly to have cables everywhere. We could have done that with some sort of infrared but it’s too sensitive, you don’t have enough control. But that’s the next step. We did develop these leather belts—with Pwer Salzwedel, he’s worked with bands like Stereo Total, so he’s quite well known in Berlin—and we’ve managed to make them into triggers that will play MIDI notes through the belts. Oh, and if you take off the belt, you can play it like a guitar!
Fashion, turn
to the left M: Okay,
tell me about “Fashion Rules” and the Chixel. ML: Well,
we saw a very good laptop bag that Chanel made, so we’re copying
it and putting it into production. That’s the Chixel. KM: We went
to Paris because we were invited to do a photo shoot with Karl Lagerfeld
for V magazine, and we requested to have the Chanel bags as props and
they gave them to us! That was good, now we have the original to copy.
AM: That
project has to do with a song we just made called “Fashion Rules,”
our take on fashion victims and how they should get a life, basically.
And Karl Lagerfeld took the picture for the single cover, so it’s
all twisted. ML: The
song goes, “Hey you fashion people in your camouflage wear/You
think you’re really quite up there,” you know, really tongue-in-cheek
about Paris fashion, but the Chanel people are flattered, they love
it when you give them attention. AM: We’re
also in an exhibition called Fashion Rules at the Melbourne Fashion
Festival in Australia, and there’s gonna be somebody sewing in
the space, making the first prototype of this bag. The bag is made from
a PVC banner we made last year for Paris Fashion Week. So we’re
just recycling our art works into laptop bags, and 20 bags can be made
out of this banner. ML: The
Chanels cost 1,500 Euro but the Chixel is a cheaper version, 500 Euro.
Not like H&M, those big fashion companies are a little bit too cheap
because they use slave labour, which we’re not gonna do. AM: Karl
Lagerfeld has thousands of slaves working for him. We’re actually
doing this show with a group called Fair Wear, you could call them fashion
police. They go around to the different factories to make sure the goods
are being produced in a fair way, that people are getting good wages,
have a good workspace and aren’t being put through terror. M: So you’re
like the Robin Hoods of fashion. AM: Well,
when we were growing up we saw big companies ripping off small artists,
so we’re trying to turn that around. To stop that, you have to
create competition, so you can call it fantasy but somehow it works.
If you say, “We are your competition,” then you are, and if
you have a clear statement, it can’t be copied. M: Exploitation
is a recurring theme for you, in songs like “Glamour Girl.”
You have a lyric, “Do it to yourself before it’s done to you.”
Have you done it to yourself? KM: Of course
we are exploiting ourselves. I mean, we’re really going to the
limit, but that’s the way it has to be for us, somehow. ML: People
are scared of being exploited, but they forget that you can also exploit
other things around you in positive ways, like with sampling. We’re
also trying to make an example for other people to do the same. M: And no
one’s being hurt in the process. ML: Well, maybe Chanel. But it’s all for the people’s good, you know, we’re socialists! : With guests
at SAT on Sunday, March 24, 9pm, $18
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Their
music, videos, visual art, crafts and clothing are as roughly chopped
up and re-assembled as their ethos, a contradictory jumble of DIY principles
and preposterous poses informed by irony, fakery and, all things said,
bravery. Tellingly, the tumultuous trio with an implied penchant for
crank come from opposite corners of the world: the U.S. (Melissa Logan),
Australia (Alex Murray-Leslie) and Germany (Kiki Moorse), land of their
meeting place (Munich) and home base (Berlin). Along with pushing the
boundaries of technology and taste with their own punk-infused pop-electro
(as well as their label, Chicks on Speed Records), the trio have recently
crashed head-on into the mainstream fashion world, if only to use Collette
and company against themselves. The Mirror tried to get a grip on all
this chaos by chatting with the Chicks about their origins, their gear
and their Chixel.