Kids of a new wave of experimental sound-makers, inspired by synthetic vibes from the ‘80s, popular French culture from the ‘30s, vintage porn, and Back to the future, Faire is something you cannot frame. Nevertheless, their description of themselves is ‘Gaule wave’. Never heard of it yet? They don’t really care. Faire, a three-member band revolutionizing the French scene, is making its own rules with passion, transgression and ambition. From New York to Montreal, from Paris to Mexico, they have created their own aesthetic of mess no one can imitate, like an impulsion to a mystical state of trance, aggressive but sensitive, impacting the ground, the walls and the crowd.
If ‘faire’ means ‘to do’ in French, for the Parisian crew it is more about ‘to do everything yourself’. From the outfits to the visuals, from the music to the rehearsals, everything is experimentally and meticulously crafted by the trio of friends. Romain, Pierre and Simon “dig up a bit of everything everywhere”, and this is what positions them always on the cutting-edge. Coming from the prolific underground music scene in Paris, Faire has built up its own hybrid but solid identity by challenging the beauty and the beat, but never missing its point: to create this glowing but dirty madness, taking you far away from the boundaries of enclosed realities.
You define your music under your own ‘Gaule wave’, ‘Tek surf’, ‘psych France’ genres. Is it because your music can’t be labelled as any pre-existing one? A way to feel unique?
Yes, Faire was a way for us to experiment all different kinds of music, as we like to mix them up and have our own experience through them. I mean, we don't want to be assigned to a specific style of music like rock or punk because today it doesn't really mean anything to us. We are open and we love all music genres. Sometimes we feel more psychedelic, sometimes we're influenced by oriental music or rock 'n' roll; it really depends. This is why we invented our own ‘Gaule wave’ style: La Gaule used to be the name to define France from the 1st century, and the expression ‘avoir la gaule’ means ‘to have a hard-on’. So we can say our music is a kind of creative experimentation mixing the sexy, the new and the old in the same tracks.
Romain, Pierre and Simon are the names behind the Faire project. What is the creative process like for a band with three thinking heads?
Yeah, we've been friends for a long time. We love playing music together so we’ve had to learn how to live with every personality. Each song has its own process of creation – it’s really special. Most of the time we find tunes while jamming for hours on the same beat or bass line, and when we record, one or more of us work on the vocals. We've been friends for twelve years so we always agree in the end. These past six months our band's life has been more intense than ever, so we don't even have the time to think about it. We just do everything we think could be part of the Faire project.
Can we say your savoir-Faire is made in Paris?
In a way, yes: we all grew up in Paris by the Bastille (11th district), met at school and started playing in a basement in our neighbourhood. We've had all sorts of bands with different singers and musicians with which we grew up. But our savoir-faire is also from all the influences that we find while traveling around with our project.
Now we have the chance to rehearse in a club by the Canal Saint-Martin called Le Point Ephèmere. We have access to very cool studios but what we love the most is playing in Paris. We can really feel that there's been a new energy in the city these past years. More and more people are really getting into this kind of crazy aggressive state of trance during our gigs! It's incredible for us on stage, it makes us share even more with the people here.
Now we have the chance to rehearse in a club by the Canal Saint-Martin called Le Point Ephèmere. We have access to very cool studios but what we love the most is playing in Paris. We can really feel that there's been a new energy in the city these past years. More and more people are really getting into this kind of crazy aggressive state of trance during our gigs! It's incredible for us on stage, it makes us share even more with the people here.
Tell us more about your recent collaboration with the Paris based label miqroclima.
We met the founders Antoine and Florine at one of our gigs when coming back from Mexico in June 2016, and after a few months they became our managers. They are really good human beings and are usually up for all our stupid ideas, like drowning people in blue and orange confetti at our last release party. We decided not to sign with the label to stay independent and keep a hand on everything we're doing. But working with microqlima has helped us greatly in the management side; they really get us.
Tamale is a traditional Mexican dish made of ‘masa’ or dough, which is steamed in a cornhusk or banana leaf. It is also the name of your last EP. What is the secret recipe behind the production of the album?
In summer 2015, we moved to New York City to record our first EP, Savoir, and to Mexico City to edit our music videos. Arriving to Mexico, the city treated us so well that we all decided to stay there for six more months, tour and record this new EP, titled Le Tamale. We called it like that because living in our studio on a rooftop, recording tracks and only eating these Tamales was the real secret behind the EP, I guess.
Most of your songs are female names: Mireille, Sisi, Christiane, Annie, Anastasia, etc. Ex-girlfriends or utopian muses?
They’re all stories about women with names that could belong to our grandmothers, but who are actually not. Christiane is a story about a transsexual dealing with drug problems and taking care of her kids by selling herself. Anastasia is a phantasmagorical woman that eats men. Sisi is more conceptual and shows the points of view of two different guys: one that wants to marry her but never gets her, and another one who is not looking for anything but in the end gets her. Mireille is a girl's reminiscence of her good looks in college, now getting an old woman, who craves for youth unceasingly.
Faire is not only the music. It is also an ‘80s look made up of oversized blazers, tight rolled-up jeans, hair bleached pink, red and blue. Where do you dig up your style?
We really dig up a bit of everything everywhere: vintage shops, markets, our mum’s closets, etc. Right now we mostly wear the clothes we made ourselves in Mexico or that we found during our travels. You can basically manufacture anything you want in Mexico so we started adding elements to our usual clothes by creating pins and patches we made with Faire's logos, and by sewing and gluing all kinds of medallions, embroideries, bottle caps, etc. we found in the city markets. We’re also working with a fun tailor called Jose to make us pants designed by Raphael. In the end, we don’t really follow any established aesthetic; we just take a little from everywhere as long as it means something to us.
What is Faire’s most inspirational movie from the ‘80s?
Back to the future.
Down on the Youtube comments of Mireille se rappelle’s video, where you are dancing naked on a balcony, we can read this comment: “You’re pretending punk but you hide your dick in front of the cam”. What does it mean to be punk in Paris in 2017?
Lol, we don't define ourselves as punk, media does. In 2017 you’re just the children of the many different cultures that you grew up with. Punks on the one hand, hippies on the other. People need landmarks to understand who you are and it makes sense, but for us, we're just doing what we love.
About the comment: it's just that a dick is not so sexy on camera in winter.
About the comment: it's just that a dick is not so sexy on camera in winter.
The video clip of Sisi brings a new aesthetic to your music, very different from the ones you made before. Can you tell us more about the idea behind the project and the collaboration with the two female directors, Julia Tarissan and Juliet Casella?
Yeah, it’s true that this one is less psychedelic than the videos we did for the Savoir EP. We did these ones by ourselves; they were filmed in the loft where we lived in New York, and edited by Romain in Mexico. For this new EP we wanted to team up with other talents and this is how we contacted these two incredible girls. We were already keen on Juliette's video collage work, the creative collaboration worked very well so we became friends very quickly. The main idea behind the project was to use American codes for music videos (a licked aesthetic, video based on a pimped out car, car wash girls in the sun, ninjas, etc.; all of that) and transpose it in the old French countryside with weird characters and this shitty-future-handmade car.
For our last video, Bonne Mine, we’ve just decided to make a huge edit of the footage we had from Mexico (Romain had a tiny camera that got stolen so it wasn't much) and all of the concerts and trips we had since 2016. It was a way for us to show our experience during our travels and what we share with people in live.
For our last video, Bonne Mine, we’ve just decided to make a huge edit of the footage we had from Mexico (Romain had a tiny camera that got stolen so it wasn't much) and all of the concerts and trips we had since 2016. It was a way for us to show our experience during our travels and what we share with people in live.
