Alt-J Artistfacts

Alt-J song list

Alt-J Artistfacts

2007-
Joe NewmanVocals, Guitar2007-
Gus Unger-HamiltonKeyboard2007-
Gwil SainsburyGuitar, Bass2007-2014
Thom GreenDrums2007-
The band met at Leeds University where they were all students. Joe Newman had written some songs and he wanted to find some people to play with in a band, so he approached his friends Gus Unger-Hamilton, Gwil Sainsbury and Thom Green. They've had the same lineup ever since.
The four pals spent the next two years developing their music, first as Daljit Dhaliwal and then as FILMS until a case of mistaken identity with US band The Films forced them to rechristen themselves Alt-J.
Unger-Hamilton explained the band's name to FMQB: "Gwil discovered the Alt-J shortcut on his computer, which creates the 'delta' symbol, and he thought we should call our band just the delta symbol, which is a triangle in the Greek alphabet. That was kind of our band name but we chose to pronounce it Alt-J, because we knew being played on the radio, you need to really give your band a name that is spoken and not just written. So it was going to be said 'Alt-J' and written like a triangle or a delta. But now the delta symbol remains as sort of a masthead for the band."
Alt-J won the coveted Mercury Prize for their debut LP, An Awesome Wave, which is awarded to the best album from the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Joe Newman's songwriting is heavily influenced by cinema. The An Awesome Wave album title comes from a line in American Psycho while the lyrics for their song "Matilda" are an ode to Natalie Portman's 12-year-old character in Luc Besson's thriller, Léon.
The band comes from varying musical backgrounds. Gus Unger-Hamilton started his musical career as a choirboy at King’s School Ely, while Thom Green is into heavy metal. "Our music is different to what we're all into. We almost shut out our musical background," Unger-Hamilton told The Independent. "We didn't discuss what kind of music we were going to make. I didn't really know what type of music it was, it felt instinctive."
Joe Newman admitted to the Daily Telegraph that the offbeat poetic imagery in his lyrics can be hard to decipher. "I can read a book, and find the most moving part is just a sentence," he said. "It's like looking at a masterpiece through a straw, and then finding a tiny composition within the whole that you like more than the picture itself. That's how I feel with music. Some people think my lyrics are gibberish but that doesn't bother me."
The drummer of Alt-J, Thom Green, suffers from Alport syndrome, a rare genetic disease which causes hearing and kidney failure. He lost most of his hearing by the time he was six and is now eighty per cent deaf.

Comments: 1

Lauren WitteAlt-J has had some of the hardest-hitting poetry to ease my mind since finding an atypical kinship with Cobain and Plath.

Hey, to each their own.
just hope the quoted excerpt on critical opposition
vi's-a-vié "lyrical gibberish"
looked at the fine print
prior to deeming it indecipherable.

see more comments

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