alt-J (â)âs name takes a little explaining. Pronounced âalt-Jâ, the delta sign is created when you hold down the alt key on your computer keyboard and punch âJâ, providing your computer is a Mac and not a PC, that is. Itâs more than an un-Google-able symbol that looks good on a T shirt, though. As guitarist/bassist Gwil Sainsbury notes, âin mathematical equations itâs used to show change,â and the bandâs relatively new name came at a turning point in their lives.
Gwil, Joe Newman [guitar/vocals], Gus Unger-Hamilton [keyboards] and Thom Green [drums] met at Leeds University in 2007. Gus studied English Literature; the other three Fine Art. By their second year of studies, Joe had played Gwil a handful of his own songs inspired by his guitar-playing dad and hallucinogens, and the pair had begun recording them in their dorm rooms, ready for sharing with a world still hung up on MOR, cookie-cutter indie. As Joe remembers: âGwil was originally a producer as much as a musician, because he was GarageBand-ing my original songs. But personally, I was just interested in my friends back home in Southampton hearing that I was doing music. I thought, âIâll get a MySpace up, and when I go home for Christmas theyâll all come up to me and comment on what they thought.ââ
Needless to say, the response to Joeâs hushed falsetto yelps and Gwilâs rudimentary sampling skills was good. When Thom was played the tracks he joined the band straight away. âI hadnât heard anything like it,â he says. âIt was music I was looking for, I just didnât know I was. I just loved it.â
Gus completed the bandâs line-up and together â first as Daljit Dhaliwal and then as the slightly easier to spell Films â the four friends spent the next two years playing art-show fundraisers for their course-mates and venues around town, developing a precise and unique brand of alt. pop that draws on poignant folk verses, crushing synths, smart hip hop syncopations and tight vocal harmonies. Their then moniker of Films had to go by the summer of 2011, though, largely to avoid confusing the band with Californian punk troupe The Films. But with all members having recently graduated and the band planning a move to Cambridge, it couldnât have come at a better time â alt-J (â) meant change and it also gave them a unique name to go with the unique âfolk-stepâ that they now concoct in the basement of a terrace house in Cambridgeshire.
Since then, attention, admiration and favourable comparisons have come thick and fast for alt-J (â). Even before the release of their debut single on Loud And Quiet Recording last October (a record that has long since sold out), the band was likened to Wild Beasts, âIn Rainbowsâ era Radiohead, The xx and Anthony & The Johnsons â four acclaimed acts noticeable by their ability to create the kind of patient, sophisticated, intricate music that alt-J (â) do. âNick Drake meets Gangsta Rap,â went another likening.
An early demo of the skittish, euphoric âBreezeblocksâ gained healthy radio play without even being released; alt-J (â)âs SoundCloud managed to generate over 70,000 plays in its first 6 months with little to no promotion.
So much of the bandâs sound is their own, perhaps because, as Gwil puts it, âwe never had any ambitions at allâ. From Joeâs high soul cry and Thomâs refusal to drum with cymbals (a rule first born out of necessity, because he couldnât fit a full drum kit in Gwilâs bedroom where the band first practiced, so instead used saucepans), to the sparse guitars and Gusâ delicate key clunks on songs like âBloodfloodâ, a neat sound-bite for ââs music is yet to be coined, and perhaps never will be. And by challenging what constitutes folk, hip hop, indie and pop music, the band have quickly found themselves in the studio at the beginning of 2012, recording their debut album for Infectious Music with long-time producer Charlie Andrew (Micachu & The Shapes, Eugene McGuinness).
Their debut album will further explore alt-J (â)âs varied soundscapes and percussive, experimental grooves, but itâs also a record that isnât as stringently leftfield as some might be expecting.
Veering wildly from psychedelic avant-pop to skeletal folktronica, the finished album promises to trade in understated beauty one minute and epic oddities the next, just as youâd expect from a debut album that tackles everything from love to bullfighting to the heroic life of 1930s war photographer Gerda Taro, crushed by a tank on the frontline. Other tracks are inspired by cinema, including âMatildaâ (about Natalie Portmanâs character in Luc Bessonâs Leon) and the Good The Bad And The Ugly-referencing âTessellateâ; others seem to have come to the band as unexpectedly as they come to us, sounding like great experimental pop acts we already know about, yet somehow only ever completely like the band with a triangle for a name.
