Look at their back catalog or simply look for their CDs in any record shop and you’re likely to come across a comprehensive yet equally impressive collection of remixes. Re-workings of everyone from Playgroup to Groove Armada. But what about Chicken Lips’ own music, who are they anyway and since when did chickens have lips?

After major-label wrangling in the early ’90s and questionable appearances on UK TV, Andy Meecham and Dean Meredith were once better known as Bizarre Inc. Disillusioned by the success brought to them by Top Ten hits like “Playing with Knives,” the duo buried their heads in the sand and went underground. They emerged in 1999 with the first Chicken Lips LP “Echo Man.” If the record didn’t sell as well as their previous work, that didn’t protract from their talent as producers and this fact didn’t go unnoticed. That’s when the remixes came into play. In fact, there were so many requests that the duo became a trio, with the enrolment of DJ and beats surgeon Steve Kotey. With so many remixes, then... Have the Lips been wrongly chicken-holed? “Yeah, you get caught up in it though,” clucks Steve in a heavy London accent. “We just start laying down a track for our next album and we get a phone call to do a remix. You’ve got to pay the rent somehow!”
And the worst remix Chicken Lips have been offered? “I wouldn’t say there’s a worst one. I wouldn’t want to give any names away because we might not want to turn them down again… Let’s just say that there have been some funny ones. Not Britney Spears or anything, but there have definitely been some interesting offers.”
Their latest was to compile the umpteenth volume of the prestigious DJ Kicks series — an opportunity they jumped at. “The last two records have been very now and up to date. Ours is a producer’s mix album, not a DJ’s. It shows where we get our inspiration and ideas from. It’s the Chicken Lips story: where we’re coming from and where we’re going.”
As architects of their own sound, with a “schema” mapping out a top-down approach to re-conquering the music industry, is their career really as unintentional as it seems? Remixing and re-editing songs has made a large contribution to musical output for years now, but lately there has been an influx of remixers, re-editors and even bootleggers. The latter are throwing up interrogatives that question the future of certain musical genres, most notably dance-related. “People have always borrowed from other songs, but now the whole vocal of one record is being lifted and put over the music of another. It’s laughable!”
If we’ve reached remix meltdown, where does that leave Chicken Lips? Refusing to close the brackets around their musical grammar, the trio are at last leaving behind those tempting remix “opportunities” and focusing on their third studio album, “Landing,” due out next year. “It’s going to be different from the first two, obviously, but we’re making sure we’re getting some vocals down to make it something special. We’re moving forward, getting together a band so we’re not just a production outfit.”
Fans of breaks and electro, house and deep house, punk and funk will take to their sound like a chicken to water: “We please all different genres, but we just want to please ourselves, making music we can be proud of and think ‘yeah… I’m happy with that.’” Talk of guest vocalists reveals possible collaborations with Crazy Girl and Mocky, although Steve assures “there will be people a bit more well known, but not Mick Jagger or anyone.” So is the ample-lipped rocker anything to do with the group’s name? “No,” Steve confirms with a smile, “Chicken Lips is what you get when you’ve had too much to drink and what you say simply stops making sense.” DJ Kicks — Chicken Lips (!K7/Pias)