The Strange World Of… Chicks On Speed

It tickles Alex Murray-Leslie that Chicks On Speed’s first work in 1997 was a fake box set, part of a live art piece at Munich techno club Ultraschall called ‘I Wanna Be A DJ…Baby!’ She and group co-founder Melissa E. Logan stood at the DJ decks and smashed records to their own sound collage tape. The box set included a T-shirt, cassette, and a paper record for a fake band. “We were really into dada, situationism, fluxus. These movements worked with box sets at times, with various games and concepts,” recalls Murray-Leslie. Now, 28 years later they are releasing HEARTopia, a real 5LP box set with 37 tracks celebrating decades of art activism and musical collaboration (also containing their new album HEARandNOWtopia)on Grönland Records this week. 

Chicks On Speed formed in 1997 when Murray-Leslie and Logan were students at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. One night Murray Leslie went to visit Logan, who was working quickly to create 25 collage paintings to sell at an auction for an art consulting company the following day, so Murray-Leslie offered to help, collaging words and slogans. After painting for twelve hours Logan said, “Shit, we need a collective name!” And because they were producing so rapidly, Murray-Leslie suggested Chicks On Speed. 

What started as an art project morphed into musical collaboration with DJ/producers on the German techno scene, like Ramon Bauer, Christopher Just and DJ Hell. “There was a great conversation going on between Germany and Detroit at the time. And so I think inspiration came from partying a lot in Ultraschall, and then going into the studio early mornings and doing the takes”, says Murray-Leslie. Mixing original songs with covers (their debut single was a version of The Normal’s ‘Warm Leatherette’), they set the template for deep, glitchy electroclash, cushioning deadpan lyrics and ebullient slogans riding strident beats. As well as core collaborator Christopher Just, over the course of five albums they have worked with other key producers including Miss Kittin, Finnish dub master Mika Vainio, and Chilean producer Cristian Vogel. Their music spans the new wave synth pop of Chicks On Speed Will Save Us All! (2000) to 2003’s sarky electroclash project 99 ¢, featuring guest artists Peaches and Tina Weymouth, to the noisy electro punk and no wave of Press The Spacebar (2004) and Cutting The Edge (2009), to 2014’s avant garde Artstravaganza, featuring spoken word samples from Julian Assange and Yoko Ono.

Over time Chicks On Speed have utilised a unique collision of performance art, radical feminism, fashion, textile work, academic study and instrument design. They work with a global sensibility – Murray-Leslie is from a small town near Sydney, Logan from New York, while other core members include Munich stylist Kiki Moorse, and Anat Ben-David, an Israeli art student who by the time she joined the band in 2000 had relocated to London, to become an MA student at Goldsmiths. “Chicks On Speed is a monster, an amoeba that grows, shrinks, dissembles and reassembles,” explains Ben-David. “We are all artists in our own right, but we don’t work in a void, we’re connected.” 

With a prodigious output that spans multiple projects, it can be a bewildering experience navigating Chicks On Speed’s back catalogue. But with helpful reflection  from Murray-Leslie and Ben-David, we pick ten key entry points and resonant moments.  

‘Euro Trash Girl’ from Chicks On Speed Will Save Us All (2000)

Alex Murray-Leslie: That was a cover version of Cracker’s original country and western song. We approached it with the notion of détournement, taking a ready-made and making it strange. We were Eurotrash Girls ourselves, having arrived in Europe from different parts of the world, so we wanted to twist the meaning of that song. We wanted to make an anthem for young women, in a way that sounds like (French DJ/producer) Miss Kittin, who empowered so many young women around her. Men treat the voice in techno music very much like a decoration. They embed and silence it, so I said, “Let’s make the voice really loud and present above the beats.” At first producers tried to turn Melissa’s voice down a bit, but it’s incredible, so strong. I’d describe our Euro Trash Girl as a nonchalant explorer, carefree and unafraid. 

‘Kaltes Klares Wasser’ from Chicks On Speed Will Save Us All (2000)

AML: I met Gudrun Gut (from German band Malaria!) in the club, and she inspired us to start spoken word pieces. She said, why don’t you do a remix of ‘Kaltes Klares Wasser’, in the same way as ‘Euro Trash Girl’, improvising on top of beats. We never do strict cover versions, I call them re-versions, taking inspiration and creating a new lyric over the top. I was born in Australia so I didn’t get to listen to many punk or new wave bands like The Slits or Delta 5 or The Raincoats. I was a bit deprived. But in Munich, suddenly we were exposed to all this music like ‘Kaltes Klares Wasser’ (‘Cold Clear Water’). That was when we realised, ‘Oh my God, these are our sisters, but they came 20 years before us. We have to bring their message back because we’re links in a chain.’ As the artist Lynn Hershman Leeson says, it’s up to the next generation to bring forward feminist ideas, otherwise they get lost. Bands like Malaria!, Kleenex [LiLiPUT], and The Raincoats have been mentors to us since the beginning, they were a lighthouse for us. 

‘We Don’t Play Guitars’ from 99 Cents (2003)

AML: I work with technologists developing new musical instruments, so I play “theremin tapestry”, “computational footwear”, and “the high heeled shoe guitar”. Classic instruments have a certain history that is associated with male notation systems, and I wanted to create something that would present an opposite which cannot repeat itself. For example, you can’t really repeat the theremin so there’s no concept of virtuosity. These instruments are non-virtuosic. I have played the high heeled shoe guitar now for 22 years and it’s my instrument for stage.

I wrote this anthem against the guitar, just one shot of pure frustration with male cock rock solos. It was also a statement that allowed us to explore new instruments for musical expression. Peaches was in Berlin at the time and we asked if she wanted to come and record with us. She and Chilly Gonzales, her long-term collaborator, had this whole free cabaret energy. She joined us in the studio, grabbed her guitar and said, “Well I play guitar, I make my own music!” She’s ok to play it because she’s a queer feminist drag queen, challenging the male solo. She creates a body sculpture with the guitar. 

After that Melissa and I had a discussion, because she wanted to bring a guitar onstage for Chicks on Speed and I said, “No way.” So she said, “Well bring something else onstage.” I said, ok, and that’s why the high heeled shoe guitar was invented.

‘Wordy Rappinghood’, from 99¢ (2003)

AML: When I was 13 the film Stop Making Sense changed my life. I had quite an imagination and when I saw David Byrne’s jacket growing I thought it was real. I also saw Tina Weymouth in the world dress and I thought, ‘That’s the future! That’s my thing!’ Years later we met Tina, and she said, “D’you want to do a version of Wordy Rappinghood?” Tom Tom Club was very much about community and all these wonderful musicians she and Chris Frantz brought together – very inclusive and multicultural. I think that’s the epitome of the song. 

For our version we brought together a transgenerational community of women, with guest vocals from Miss Kittin, Le Tigre, ADULT.’s Nicola Kuperus, Kevin Blechdom, and Tina Weymouth. We gave each artist two sentences and they sent us their recordings. It was a very democratic process. There’s a cult of personality around bands and celebrities – Chicks On Speed is always trying to get rid of the stage and make it very democratic. This song does that, it’s like a shared conversation.

‘Flame On’ from 99¢ (2003)

AML: Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen were the Finnish electronic duo Pan Sonic. We met them in Barcelona at Sonar Festival, and became really good friends. When Melissa worked on this song with Mika she really developed her solo voice as a free-speaking improvisor. Her songwriting and story-telling is special, quite theatrical. Mika was such a sensitive person. We’d go to his house and he loved playing his dub records. I didn’t train in music, I got into it via art school like a lot of art bands do – but Mika helped me hear music differently. Listening with him was like meditating, we always learned something. Mika was a gamechanger in the field, I don’t think people really understand his contribution to electronic music through dub. I remember when he and Ilpo first played at Ultraschall in Munich the whole club was vibrating. That was a life-changing experience for me – the low frequencies and sub-woofers they used were immense. They experimented with sound as a weapon.

‘Art Rules’ from Cutting The Edge (2009)

Anat Ben-David: In 2000 I was artist-in-residence at the School Of Visual Theatre in Jerusalem, and curated a night featuring Chicks On Speed. It was love at first sight – so fresh and exciting, working with mixtapes, visuals and wild paper dresses. I ended up as a VJ on their Electroclash tour with Peaches and MIT, and started writing lyrics with them. Douglas Gordon joined the band and we became Art Rules crew. He was a successful Turner Prize winner and art star, and he wanted to get involved with something raw and free. This song has a critical perspective on the art industry, with its lavish exhibitions and galleries, a lot of money spent on silly things. The art world is pandering to capitalism, forgets about the meaning of community and collaboration. 

I remember us being in the studio coming up with lyrics in the moment. It was very fast. I realised that lyric writing is not the same as poetry; words and sound are two different systems so once they come together it creates a new form of information – my PhD concerned this concept. This realisation freed me from trying to focus on text. 

AML: We were very inspired by the Guerilla Girls and the song was a form of art activism – using humour as critique. Our cheeky tone meant we could get away with a lot. I don’t think we have the same ironic tone anymore, because it doesn’t have relevance. Art now needs to be a driver of social change. 

‘Utopia’, from Artstravaganza (2014), and 2018 megamix on HEARTopia (2025)

AML: This song was inspired by Finnish architect-musician Tuomas Toivonen’s work Urbanism In The House (2010), which included the track ‘New Utopia’. We loved his approach of making house music function as a vehicle for critical thought, merging architectural discourse with club culture. Taking his conceptual frame we collaged it into Chicks On Speed’s sonic world, while opening the door to sampled feminist activist voices like Yoko Ono’s. 

The result is a musical “utopia” in itself, a cacophony of styles that carries a mixture of idealism and urgency. When we revisited it for the 2018 Megamix, we wanted it to explode in all directions — with electro, ska, and even a grungy guitar section. The result is a mash-up of styles that shouldn’t coexist but somehow do, which is really the point, mixing languages and cultures. And we push the idea even further with our box set, demanding ‘Utopia’ be now, in light of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Produced by our long-term collaborator Christopher Just, the result is a listening experience that refuses smooth music biz as usual Spotify style consumption or scrolling listening. Instead, it pushes the audience to notice the seams.

‘Arctic Rabbit’, from HEARandNOWtopia (2025)

AML: It was my idea to do this re-version. The building intensity, the references to drug taking, that’s what always interested me about ‘White Rabbit’. When doing a cover version, it’s about how you can grasp the original ideas and bring it into the now – so there’s a dramaturgical line where the emotion hits you: “One click makes you large, one click makes you small.” The analogy to social media likes brings a parallel shift into now, and maybe also embodies the tragedy of it. When I look back, some of the music we make has an element of Greek tragedy.

‘Tension’, from HEARandNOWtopia (2025)

ABD: Alex got in touch with me and said, “There’s a new song we’re working on.” I was very busy that day but I thought, I’ve got to do it. The song immediately appealed to me, and I recorded it quickly in my studio in Dalston. ‘Tension’ is about anxiety and energy. We find ourselves charged by a lot of electricity, both metaphorically and with machines we’re using all the time, like computers. We’re bombarded with tensions, with horrible wars happening in the world, so it’s a constant struggle to protect ourselves. The track expresses this vulnerability, but also the tension of invention. Maybe it’s the capitalist’s tool, to show control over us. A lot of my academic research is around this, how digital media affects us and how we behave as humans. 

‘Deep Dark Oceans’, from HEARandNOWtopia (2025)

ABD: This was another project with Alex – she sent me an impression of the main idea, which was relating to the people thrown off slave ships during the brutal middle passage, and I sang over it. I had an image in my mind of voices that come up from the deep, writing “the shadows… in the margins, the ancient play.” There are things we try to hide away, but we can’t get rid of these lives, the sound of their voices is still strong. Their voices will eventually emerge stronger and more powerful because people tried to forget about them. I see a link between slave ships and migrants on asylum boats. We can’t avoid the atrocities that are happening, and this song touches on that.  

Chicks On Speed release the HEARTopia box via Grönland on Friday