When Prince changed his name to, well, that symbol, we weren’t ready to make the step. It didn’t fit in and was impossible to announce on Top of the Pops. Tat was a different era, it was almost twenty years ago - Top of the Pops is no more. We’ve since opened our minds to cross genre pollination, self-discovery of bands by circumnavigating the presses, and perhaps most essentially, thanks to the internet, we don’t even need to pronounce the name ∆. But if you’re new to them, you can call them Alt-J
Hey, Gus. So it’s a bit of a British tradition that I ask what the time is over there (Gus is speaking from America somewhere) and what the weather’s like? It’s 10am, and I haven’t been outside yet today so I’m not sure what it’s like, but it’s probably quite crisp and bright, as it was like that yesterday.
I guess we have to start not quite at the start, and talk about your name change. You had a bit of success under the name Films a few years ago, but had to change that because of copyright issues, why Alt-J? Erm, it was just something that we could all agree on; it wasn’t really a name that resonated with us in any deep way, it was just something Gwil (guitar/bass) came up with that sounded quite cool, and we really needed a new name by that point, so we thought “Well this sounds good, let’s go for that.”
One thing I wanted to know is whether you wrote the lyric “Triangles are my favourite shape” before or after you settled on Alt-J? Tat was before, which is why we thought it could be a slightly more appropriate name, but you know, people like to link that up and we just don’t really think about it.
You’ve been applauded for having a great breadth of genres on the record, as well as an impressive number of art references. Te lyric in ‘Intro’, “Tis is an ode to the canon” springs to mind. Is that what this album is; a dedication to everything that has come before, and all of your favourite things in the art world? Yeah exactly, we’re very big believers in the fact that if you like something that someone has done, you should take it and reference it. It’s very hard to be really original, so it’s ok as long as you acknowledge that. You always end up taking other people’s ideas anyway, you just have to reference where you’ve taken them from then that’s ok; that’s our philosophy I think.
NEWSPAPER HAS DECLINED TO EVEN REVIEW IT. NOT THAT I’M BITTER [LAUGHS]
18 /October 2012/
outlineonline.co.uk BUT ALMOST EVERY DAILY FOR THE MERCURY, NOMINATED ALBUM IS OUR
Te album has so many levels; it can be equally enjoyed as a collection of straight-up pop songs, or analysed a great deal more closely. Where does the inspiration come for such intricate song-writing? I think we all watch a lot of films and read a lot of books and we’re not afraid to see anything as potential material for a song. If you don’t have
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