Chicks on Speed are Melissa Logan and Alex Murray-Leslie who've conspired together since they ran their illegal bar together, behind the Munich Art Academy in the late 90s.You can try this at home. Sew these ingredients together and you got Chicks On Speed's happy white girl howling surprise of a fifth album, "Cutting The Edge":
1) Take a lot of art and heart and make it smart with catchy, scratchy melodies and pithy, echoey words that lacerate and negotiate the crazy state of human play. Primp and prep primary popping colors and lock them down with hooks that click tight, in saucy, defiant songs that spin you across the shiny dancefloors of your mind.
2) Make tunes that matter. Dramas and meditations in pop song form. Vibrator, whose B52's panache lured that band's Fred Schneider to join its sexy romp. Super Surfer Girls' funny beach fantasies; Art Rules Pop's scalding satire of art's money dance; Sew- ing Machine's found sounds from the sweatshop and inter-linguistic lyrics, the provocative textures of Extended Paint- brush's bouncy hedonistic agit-pop; the sheer provocation of Sex In Der Stadt's recycling porn ads; and the title track's timeless question - Are you fake? Or are you real?
3) Choose your collaborators wisely. You must trust them abso- lutely. We're talking serious threats like Mark Stewart; Anat Ben-David, Joe Robinson, Douglas Gordon, A.L. Steiner, Kathi Glas, Christopher Just, Fred Schneider, Gerhardt Potuznik, Patrick Pulsinger and especially UK Super producer team A Scholar and Physician.
4) Work across nations and oceans with tools like Skype and OBJEKT instruments you make yourself - amplified rocks, guitars like stiletto heels, saxophone warbling through guitar amps, piano strings plucked by hand.
5) Wear your own designs of "super suits" that trigger sound and video, made of futuristic textiles with ancient cat's eyes that see into the present.
6) Let a smorgasbrod of symbols slash expectations as you smash the grey part- itions between art, fashion, music, museums, government, industry and the way you choose to live your life & dreams.
7) Don't forget the scissors, just as effective as a big bass drum, cutting you off from what you want to leave behind and giving this record its name.
8) Add a dash of heartbreak, hilarity and wicked insight.
9) Record on the run, in hotel rooms, trains, bathrooms in cellars of global art galleries, over Skype and live on stage at Art Rules performances at MOMA in New York and the Centre Pompidiou in Paris.
10) Keep stitching. The departure of Kiki Moore after their last album two years ago, caused soul-searching. Would the Chicks survive? But COS's exuberant art needs kept them flinging their own glitter. Feel it? It's our time to shine. Fuck off, vampires, it's too late.
by Vivien Goldman

CHICKS ON SPEED’s fifth album “Cutting The Edge” utilises the collective as a mechanism for the production of instantaneous sound and music recordings. The Chicks worked with: Whomadewho, Mark Stewart, Joe Robinson, A.L. Steiner, Kathi Glas, Anat Ben-David, Christopher Just, Fred Schneider, Gerhardt Potuznik, Patrick Pulsinger and especially UK Super producer team “A Scholar and Physician”.
The studios, where the album was made, included hotel rooms, trains, bathrooms in cellars of art galleries, over Skype and live recordings taken from their Art Rules performances @ MoMA and Centre Pompidou.
The songs range from self-referencing pieces, like “Art Rules” and “Extended Paintbrush”, full of insider information and irony, poking fun at the art world (to encourage people to be courageous and humorous) 60’s bubble gum pop “BUZZ”, which is all about the lost glamour of flying, Fassbinder inspired “Black and White Diva” featuring Kiki Moorse, who departed the group 2 years ago, to persue a solo career. “Sewing Machine” came about after the Chicks found a photo of themselves in El Pais crediting them as being Kraftwerk on stage. “Vibrator” ended up sounding so B52’s-ish that the Chicks just had to call up Fred Schneider. And yes, the recording happened over Skype.