Dead Horse One

French band Dead Horse One fuse a dense dual-guitar assault with expansive, psych-inflected dream-pop and shoegaze atmospheres. After scattered early releases, they gained traction across Europe during the mid-2010s through two favorably received full-lengths and performances alongside sympathetic predecessors such as Ride and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Their third album, The West Is the Best, surfaced in late 2019. In the years that followed, the music grew denser and more forceful, a direction that crystallized on the 2024 release Seas of Static.

The quartet originated in the southern French city of Valence in 2011, coalescing around Olivier Debard on vocals and guitar, Ludovic Naud on vocals and bass, Antoine Pinet on drums, and Jérôme Simonian on guitar. Drawing from Swervedriver, Ride, and the Telescopes, they shaped a melodic blend of shoegaze, droning noise-pop, and understated psychedelia that surfaced on their self-titled debut EP and the Heavenly Choir of Jet Engines EP, both issued in 2012. For their first long-player, Dead Horse One enlisted Ride’s Mark Gardener as producer; Without Love We Perish appeared on the Dead Bees label in 2014.

Subsequent years found the group consolidating its presence on the European live circuit while navigating an initial personnel shift. Guitarist Simonian departed and was succeeded by Maxime Garcia; keyboardist and guitarist Ivan Tziboulsky joined as a fifth member. After signing with Requiem Pour un Twister, they tracked their sophomore album, 2017’s Season of Mist, under the guidance of John Loring from the California group Fleeting Joys. Loring and his wife and bandmate Rorika Loring returned to helm the third LP, The West Is the Best, in 2019.

Over the following period the band’s aesthetic evolved markedly. The 2022 EP When Love Runs Dry introduced a pronounced grunge sensibility, its sludgy, distorted guitars supporting the airy vocal lines. That trajectory persisted on the fourth album, Seas of Static. Issued in 2024 and mixed by Brendan Williams of Warm and Soul Blind, the eleven-track collection marked Dead Horse One’s most abrasive statement to date.