Jue Festival: Interview with We are Enfant Terrible

Just ’cause the mercury drops don’t mean the music stops, and this weekend proved to be the case. The first annual Jue Festival – a multi-platform/multi-city celebration of music and art – began this weekend, and Dennis “Dow Jones” Shaw of South Rakkas Crew kicked things off Saturday night at Block 8, with DJ Wordy and the Hotpot crew doing a mash-up of dancehall and reggae (you can take a look at our interview with "Dow Jones" Shaw, here). On Sunday night, the French electro-pop trio of We Are Enfant Terrible was joined by Pet Conspiracy for a high-energy jam session at 2 Kolegas (see our interview with WAET below). ’Twas a wild night of good times that continued on at The Boat.

The Jue Festival wraps up this week, and last up on the Beijing music roster will be Demerit, Discord, The Flyx and Overdose, ending things on a head-bangin’ note Wednesday night at MAO Livehouse.

If you missed catching We Are Enfant Terrible live, check out our interview with the band below:

the Beijinger: Tell us about We Are Enfant Terrible.

We Are Enfant Terrible: The band is pretty new. We’ve played together for six or seven months now, but I [PoPCLO] met Thomas (the guitarist) ten years ago. We were together at school and we used to play songs together. And then we met Funky Fingers, who does laptop and 8-bit, and we asked him to join us on drums, and then we started live performing.

tbj: What’s the concept behind the band?

WAET: Don’t know if there’s really a concept. It’s just to have fun and make music together. We started to mix 8-bit music and new music together. So we try to take new songs, electronic music, and music from our childhood, like from playing Gameboy and stuff, and put it together.

tbj: Where does the name come from?

WAET: It was something I read in a book, and it’s a common term. It means “wild child.” It represents what we play, because it’s music mixed from our childhood with new stuff. We think it makes sense with the music we play. And we mix English with French because it’s messy, like us.

tbj: How has your journey to Beijing been?

WAET: We went ice-skating just before arriving, at Houhai. We made some great videos of that. We got here this afternoon, yesterday we were in Guangzhou and before that Hong Kong and Shanghai, and next we’re going to Nanjing. They’re all really different. We’ve only seen each city for a few hours but it’s really beautiful. We drove around the Forbidden City in a car, which is cool when it’s so cold. But it’s not so cool when it’s so cold.

tbj: How has the reception been so far?

WAET: Chinese people are crazy. The energy has been so great. In Shanghai, it was so crazy, it was crowded, a lot of people. People were really happy, maybe drunk, it was amazing. So we’re trying to see if we can play again in Shanghai before we go back. We wish we could stay longer in Beijing, but we just don’t have time. On Friday, we go back and play in France.

tbj: Since you guys are so new, you probably don’t have an album out yet, right?

WAET: Not at the moment. We didn’t have any time to record, but when we finish up, we’re going to record something. We hope to have an EP out in March or April.

tbj: For the time being, describe in one sentence what you guys do.

WAET: Wild Happiness.

Links and Sources
MySpace: We are Enfant Terrible