#Dead Pirates #McBess #psychedelic rock #garage rock #art rock #heavy psych #animated music video
Dead Pirates roared into existence in 2009 as the “band” behind “Wood (Dirty Melody),” an infectious slice of garage punk that soundtracked an animated music video by the French illustrator Matthieu Bessudo — better known as McBess. At the time, the “band” was just McBess himself, a chance for him to stretch his creative muscles beyond the Max Fleischer-inspired artwork and videos for which he’s become known. McBess created the video for “Wood” during his day job at Oscar-winning VFX studio The Mill. “What I wanted to do was make music,” he says. “It didn’t really matter if I became famous or anything like that. It just started to get bigger and bigger.”
It happened quickly; after the release of “Wood (Dirty Melody),” a friend asked Mcbess to play a private Christmas party, so he put together a rudimentary group, including his younger brother, Tristan, flown in from Berlin, on guitar. In 2010, a Dead Pirates 7” was recorded to accompany a McBess-penned comic book entitled Malevolent Melody. Two more EPs followed in 2011 and 2014, along with shows in London and Europe, and a tour to South America in 2015. “It was strange,” says McBess, explaining how his band ended up playing to a crowd of 500 people in Buenos Aires. “I went to South America to do an exhibition, and a friend of mine there was into some good music and said it would be easy to set up a tour. He landed us like six or seven dates.”
Now, Dead Pirates are gearing up to release their debut LP, “Highmare,”a collection of ultra-heavy psychedelic jammers as indebted to ‘70s classics as McBess’ artwork is to Betty Boop. And they’ve had no trouble finding an audience — the first pressing of Highmare is almost completely sold out on Bandcamp. McBess is ready for the attention. “Before this I was never 100% certain of what we were doing, he says. “But this one is different. Nobody is taking it lightly.” From: https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/dead-pirates-interview
