When you name your band after a keyboard shortcut – Pressing ‘alt’ and ‘J’ simultaneously on a mac keyboard produces a delta symbol that is the actual band name – you can expect that the band will defy easy classification.
Forming at Leeds University in 2008, the band took four years to release their first album, An Awesome Wave. Recorded when the band could get spare studio time, the debut album won critical praise. BBC Radio 6 awarded them Music Album of the Year 2012 and they also won the 2012 British Mercury Music Prize. One reviewer summed up the band as follows: “Alt-J surely understands that intrigue, however precious, is its best currency.”
In 2013 the toll of heavy touring led to the departure of band member Gwil Sainsbury. alt-J continued as a trio and released their second album, This Is All Yours, in 2014. Ith debuted at number 1 in the UK and earned a Grammy nomination. Several singles and a third album followed, but alt-J’s biggest successes came in TV and film placements.
In March, the band will release their fourth album, The Dream. Earlier this month, the group played live in front of an audience for the first time in three years. They had taken all of 2019 off – each member focused on their personal projects which were not at all music-related. Reconvening in 2020, the band began to work on the now completed new album.
Frontman Gus Unger-Hamilton was reassured by the process of making the new record, saying that “musically we’re still finding our feet.” He means it as a positive – “we’re not repeating ourselves.”
