The animated music video “Alice,” which dropped today, is the latest multi-media masterpiece from the professional alter egos of Matthieu Bessudo, who publishes as the illustrator mcbess and the musician/producer mcbaise. These videos generally take about six months of illustration work.
I recently wrote a bit about this multi-platform release here, which involved a line of clothes and his latest vinyl collectible toy.
This piece is more of a review of the video and music from the insanely talented independent artist, who enlisted French animator Nicolas Macia.
As I’ve written before, mcbaise’s music has frequently touched on yacht rock, only a French, more psychedelic take on the sub-genre.
When I was a kid, vibing on my mom’s taste in music, which included the likes Christopher Cross, little did me or my mom know that the artist wrote “Ride Like The Wind,” under the influence of LSD.
And the storyline behind mcbess/mcbaise’s “Alice,” an obvious nod to the 161-year-old book from Lewis Carroll, clearly takes on psychedelic drugs whereas Carroll may never have intended for his story to be interpreted as a psychedelic tale as has long been the case. It’s kind of crazy that Walt Disney’s 1951 movie seemed to innocently take on “Alice in Wonderland” a good decade before psychedelics bloomed into popular culture.
Not that mcbaise doesn’t leave room for the imagination. He’s helped me better understand the risks that artists take and the room most like to leave to the imagination, allowing people to build their own associations with their work.
I’ll get back to that thought, but, first, the music.
This is the second single from the upcoming LP that mcbaise is planning to release, likely later this year.
Like “TTM,” the bromance collaboration with his techno-Mariachi homey 1000 GUAPO (released on Valentine’s Day), “Alice” continues a heavy lean into the yacht rock vibe.
It starts out with a very watery synthesizer rolling up and down before his buttery and slappy bass line enters and creates one of the melodies that fans have come to expect and crave. He is the only musician with credits on this song.
Bessudo is originally from Cannes, France, but he’s been in London for nearly two decades. The result is a very French, very sexy delivery of English vocals.
The song’s bass line and lyrics are catchy and poppy.
In the music video, the main character, a young female solo hiker heads into the Alps, beautifully illustrated in the style of a Disney film — and there are so many easter eggs throughout that you may only catch by pressing pause on the video.
She heads into an outpost “Supplies” store and walks past the blue jugs of “GUAPO” and “Muthi” matchboxes (or is it incense?) and grabs a bag of candy and a bottle of “M.”
Outside, she sits down to enjoy her provisions, but little does she know that a deviant mushroom with a cute butt decides to jump into the bag of candy and spread its psychoactive properties all over.
It brings to mind a talk that psychedelic guru Dennis McKenna gave not so long ago (just before he moved from Minnesota to Canada) of psychedelic mushrooms being a living organism with somewhat of a mind and purpose of their own. Him and his late brother Terence led a group to a remote area seeking to find a plant in which DMT naturally occurs. The group didn’t have anything to eat, but it was the rainy season and there were cubensis everywhere. The mushrooms hijacked this early research mission, McKenna said.
The screenplay and the lyrics of “Alice” hint at that truth.
“There’s a place for you to find
Let it bloom your mind”
Our character gobbles up the candies as she heads through a Disney forest and unwittingly throws the mushroom into her mouth.
The little animated mushroom leaps down her gullet and rides a spiral slide to an intersection inside of her with signs to the “anus,” “brain” “left foot” and “right foot.”
The mushroom is walking around inside and starts breaking into little pieces as Alice begins digesting it and heads deeper into the woods.
As she is overcome with fear of this accidental trip, another character in this video, a hooded, guitar-wielding reaper enters an elevator perched on top of a mountain peak. The hooded guitarist rides down into the dark bowels of the mountain, bringing light into a cavern with what appear to be Amanita muscaria mushrooms.
A guitar solo starts up as Alice continues on her apparent mission to do some rock climbing high as a kite.
She precariously makes it to the top of a wooded ledge, her face turns into a flower as she catches her breath and a glorious feeling washes over her as the guitar solo peaks.
But she trips backwards and her clothes fall the ground empty and next we know the hooded character is now watering another batch of young mushrooms as the credits roll.
Mcbess is listed as both director and co-director, and Macia gets lead animation credit.
Muthi, the related project led by Dudes marketing director Matt Christensen, is listed as “Head of interrupting while I paint.” Muthi is also working on an LP.
I was able to preview the song but only got to see the video as it was released. As I’ve learned with a lot of art, those associations we take on as art consumers can evolve over time.
My initial take on the music is that lyrically, it is some of mcbaise’s best writing.
The videos for The Dead Pirates’ “Ugo” and his last animated video for “Water Slide” are both amazing. This one might be his most clever to date in dealing with a topic that is still sadly taboo in some circles.
But now that governments around the world are easing up on their policies that have for centuries stripped humans of their civil rights, the scientific understanding of psychedelic substances are being better understood.
Still, they still remain powerful and potentially dangerous, a truth that mcbaise doesn’t try to gloss over.