The time at Elias’ place was relaxed and excited, and the time at Classick is no different, but there’s a greater urgency. While the car ride over to Classick saw various artists get played, we quickly get a marathon of the EP, as well as what the guys have been working on. Appleby makes sure I’m finished jotting down any notes on my phone before he asks Bryan to start playing the EP; he wants everyone all ears for this. The opening track, he explains, was a cut down version of a 6-minute freestyle that he and Elias felt worked really nicely.
Talk continually turns to the songs in the context of live performances. “This is gonna go crazy at a show,” Appleby points out a couple of times, “And then when you do this part bro! [vocalizes, indicates Elias]” He and Elias explains that they don’t want to be the type of artists that have people talking at their shows. “I want you to pop pills to my shit. I won’t do it, but I wanna see people do it,” Appleby says with a broad smile.
The last record on Down Dance, the guys explain to me, is sort of a peak into what they plan to do next, a look at the more performance-heavy material they plan to put out. “I feel like because I’m such a new artist, my experimentation is being done in front of people. Whether or not this ends up being where I settle genre-wise, is not important to me. I’m just focused on making music that I love listening to,” he says, looking at me intently. “It feels good,” Elias chimes in.
Afterwards Appleby suggests that they show me “Overgrown,” the next track Iris Temple is preparing to drop. I realize that this is probably what Quinn was going over at the apartment. I have to say, people are gonna go sort of crazy when they hear it.
The UK underground music scene gets brought up, which everyone present is a tremendous fan of (me aside, almost embarrassingly). Appleby talks about growing a fanbase there. “It’d be cool,” he says, “The way they embrace the weirdness of their artists, it’s something we haven’t really discovered yet. That’s my favorite music scene,”
All the music has been shown, when another, also important, matter has come up. Appleby gets a text featuring the latest version of the project’s cover art. “You haven’t finalized art for the project yet?” I ask, surprised, as we’re currently 12 hours away from drop. “Nah man [laughs], we haven’t found the right one. What do y’all think of this one though?” Everyone, including Bryan and myself, crowd around the image on his phone. It features a hooded appleby in silhouette, “Down Dance” shown in repeating after images, like the bags that say “Thank You” that you get at corner stores. He flips back and forth between that one and a negative color flip of the same thing. Eventually it gets decided that the original photo, taken by Elias, works best, so the next 20 minutes or so is spent playing with color saturation and name placement. The next day, I see that they have chosen a completely different design.
Leaving them still pouring over cover art, I take my leave and bid everyone goodbye. Elias and Quinn make sure to exchange info with me, as they’ve both got a load of other stuff to show me. I tell them I’m excited to listen. And I mean it.
I asked Appleby if he wants to check any part of the interview before it goes up. “Nah man. I wanna peep it with everyone else.”
Listen to Appleby and Elias Abid’s ‘Down Dance’ EP below.