Olli Appleyard of the Leeds post-hardcore quartet discusses cryptomnesia, physical media, and The Matrix
According to the American Psychology Association, cryptomnesia is “an implicit memory phenomenon in which people mistakenly believe that a current thought or idea is a product of their own creation when, in fact, they have encountered it previously and then forgotten it.” Keenly aware of this curiosity and its potential occurrence within the context of music, Static Dress frontman Olli Appleyard is meticulous in crafting his band’s expansive palette, intentionally avoiding contemporary influences for distinctly original worldbuilding. His approach shines through as Static Dress define their own point of view within the broader context of alternative sounds, existing in a space where free-time ambient and poetic post-hardcore are able to thrive simultaneously.
Appleyard’s first exposure to the possibilities of alternative music was when he discovered his sibling’s magazine plastered with Slipknot across its pages. It was an encounter that initially terrified him, yet became impossible to resist, as “the fear element would keep me coming back to it.” He would subsequently stumble into the wider world of nu-metal, magnetized to the likes of Korn and Limp Bizkit, while simultaneously going on to inhale ’80s hip-hop and punk. Appleyard remembers, “My love for the scene stemmed from being an outsider and always being into things which are way outside of the norm. I wasn’t into sport or any kind of generic weekend kid hobbies, and when [you’re] not on a football team, you really exclude yourself from a lot of people. I think I found comfort in finding people like me who also didn’t fit in whilst I was growing up.” Raised in the 2000s, he was also enthralled by soundtracks of sports video games like WWE SmackDown vs. Raw and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater that were packed with artists à la Rise Against and Three Days Grace, calling their lineups “next level unreal.” Not one for modern consoles, he still regularly partakes in vintage gaming worlds, naming Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland, Tekken 3, and The Matrix: Path of Neo as his favorites.
It’s crucial to recognize how the ongoing influence of The Matrix stretches far beyond its video game incarnation. Alongside the maximalist elements of the franchise’s influential soundtracks in which underground artists collide with alternative juggernauts, Appleyard is even more aware of the minutia in the movies’ audio effects. As he explains, “If you listen to the soundscapes while you’re watching the film, you’ll hear noises and you’ll see certain things…it’s the things that coerce together that will inspire me to have a certain type of sound, or a certain type of feeling, or emotion.” As for visual elements from The Matrix that stand out to him, he says, “I always like how they use the phone to connect the real world to the matrix inside of itself. And I always like that there’s a device somewhere that can be used to pull things between two worlds.” Finding common ground between the films and his approach to the visual scope of Static Dress, he reflects, “What we do is we pull between two universes constantly and are sharing similar themes from both worlds, so you know they’re in the same universe, and it’s only a matter of time until they meet. I really like how The Matrix runs a timeline; we’ve got one world and the other world, both are vastly different, but have some similarities within them.”
Sit with Static Dress’s music videos and the visual tie-ins across them are unmistakable (see: that mysterious red rotary phone), so it’s no surprise when Appleyard says, “We have pretty much the next two years written out for what we’re gonna do. Whether the budget will stretch to what we wanna do is another question [laughs]. But yeah, I’ve got everything pretty much mapped out on this,” he says, holding up a hard drive. While he hopes to eventually pen something as extensive as a book for those who have missed certain easter eggs throughout their work, he confirms the beginning of a narrative is there for those who seek it. “A lot of stuff is like, blink and you’ll miss it kind of thing…but if you actually watch it and pay attention to it, there’s so much stuff which is from things before… if you actually spend the time to digest into it and delve into it, you’ll start picking out the story of everything that’s there right now.”
Static Dress’ visual thread also recently weaved through their impressive Time To Reset livestream — an eight-song performance that was a masterclass in medium-straddling versatility. Alternating between grainy and high-definition camerawork, a dynamic visual foundation was laid for a sound that was as precise as their recordings, the intense grit and melodic glistening equally situated with expertise. The most forward-thinking element of the show was an array of flashing QR codes that led attendees down a staggering Dropbox rabbithole. Starting with a collection of cropped photos and a cover of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s “One of Us is the Killer,” a chilling clip with an accompanying QR code finally led to an interview with Marilyn Monroe. “I’m not just generally happy. If I’m generally anything. I guess, I’m generally miserable,” the late actress opines. While the connection between these digital clues is yet to be determined by the sleuths among their supporters, the mystifying aura they left in their wake was inherently rewarding.
Shifting toward the inner workings of their music alone, Appleyard sums up Static Dress’s chemistry as “chaotically constructive,” adding that “it’s very over the top…it’s a very intense process sometimes because you’ve got four different people with very different views on everything coming into a room and trying to write something and trying to work off each other…sometimes it clicks and we’ve got a song in five minutes, and then sometimes it doesn’t click, and it’s like, this is gonna take some time, you know? You’ve gotta sit on coal before you can get to diamonds sometimes.”
The payoff of their creative mayhem is palpable. The process leads Static Dress not only to post-hardcore at its finest, but genres far beyond their calling card with songs like the standout experiment “DSC_301,” which becomes a central point of our conversation. Appleyard recalls, “I freestyled it on the spot and the whole thing was basically about the perspective of waking up in the woods and starting anew, feeling so lost within yourself that you don’t know where to put perspective on life…it was just a perfect kind of thing to do. So we just dropped that song and everyone was like ‘what the fuck is going on with this band?’ I don’t know what this band is. And doing that, I knew from the second we planned to do it, that it would just allow us to do everything outside of ‘rock world.’”
Static Dress indeed thrive in the unpredictable, content to potentially upset guitar-wielding gatekeepers as they bridge the gap between scenes. Driven by that ethos, they have electrifying possibilities in store. There’s talk of an entire EP with the “DSC_301” sound alongside pure soundscape projects, all the while leaving the door open to collaborations with hip-hop, electronic, and non-music artists alike. It’s an astonishingly diverse range of ideas, but Appleyard says, “There’s so much music that we all enjoy collectively that I don’t want to ever limit us away from being able to do. It’s like, if we wanted to write a classical ensemble, we’ve got guys in the band who can do that. If we wanted to write a film score, we’ve literally got people who can do it.” As for considering how these idealized projects of wholly experimental material will be received, he affirms, “I don’t wanna ever limit anything like ‘DSC’ because it was such a bold move…granted, on the whole stream side of things it didn’t get as big as every other song, but I knew it wouldn’t because that wasn’t the purpose of it. Once you look past the ‘oh I didn’t get this many streams’ or ‘oh, no commercial success…’ What sticks with you more? The song which people mainly know us for which has the hooks and has the choruses? Or the really niche thing which you’re like, ‘woah?’”
Continuing to emphasize the meaning of music over the data it generates, Static Dress are also united by the cause of revaluing music outside of the streaming service behemoths. Appleyard explains that the “mission statement for this band is we wanna make the whole disposable music and two minute tracks which are spewed out by labels and artists these days be a thing of the past.” He poignantly laments that “tangible physical music has completely gone out the window because of things like streaming. I know it has its benefits, because you have it on tap, you have it on ease, but it’s ruining people. People have to go into rooms now and not think.” Appleyard goes on to consider, “The tangible will always outweigh the app that it’s on. If Spotify was to delete itself, how many artists are gonna sit there now and be like ‘I’ve got nothing? I’ve got no fanbase because all my fans were just editorial numbers,’” before succinctly concluding, “all this could just disappear tomorrow — what do you have to show for it?”
Considering the depth of the universe that Static Dress has crafted, their work absolutely serves as the antithesis to instant gratification culture, beckoning dedicated followers into their intricately woven world. It’s only fitting that the band has the rest of 2021 precisely planned out, packed with presently tight-lipped moments. As Appleyard shares, “It’s gonna bring a lot of new…there’s probably a storm on the way if I’m honest [laughs]. There’s so much already in place, in writing, on this fucking hard drive that I mentioned before…this will be pulled out and I can’t wait for people to see it, because I truly believe it’s gonna hopefully touch a lot of people…and moreso, inspire people to do more.”