thing; on one hand I love to hear it played on the radio, and on the other, I’m always quite cautious of radio because it seems to be that if you put a track on the radio and play it enough, it’ll get into people’s heads, a bit like brainwashing.
I was looking at the single artwork [a picture of a cropped face with brandished tongue, on which sit two LSD tabs emblazoned with the alt-J logo] and I was wondering, is the face meant to look like a child’s?! [PAUSES] Is it supposed to look like a child? No. Is it supposed to look like a child?! No - that sounds bad doesn’t it! Encouraging children to take LSD.
Well I thought that would be quite a strange statement from you guys, but it did get me thinking about how you could actually ingest alt-J? How you could get the complete, full, alt-J immersive experience? I think you’d need sight, sound and… and an ‘L’ [LAUGHS]. I don’t know really; I think because people experience things so differently, it’s hard to sort of understand what people get from a record. What they think about the lyrics, what they think about what our influences were; it amazes me how different people, with different points of view of the world can view it so differently.
Yeah, like seeing a child where you should be seeing a consenting adult. Whoops. [LAUGHS] Yeah! Maybe it is a child! I think maybe the photo of the child was just a stock photo from Getty Images or something, then they just stuck two tabs on it. But erm… yeah, oh dear.
I want to ask you quickly about new material, because instead of launching in to work on a second album, or something, you’ve written the soundtrack to a film – is it ‘Leave to Remain’? Tell us why you decided to do that… Uh-huh, yep. Well, I think that we’d always really liked the idea of writing for a film because it seems, in a way, almost musically purer than writing pop, I suppose, because you’re not worried about song structure or “we’ll not be able to put this on the radio because it doesn’t have a single, or even a chorus”, or any of this kind of stuff. So for us I think it was a really almost therapeutic thing to have done. Bruce, the director and writer was basically listening to our album while he was writing the script and he probably thought it was quite a natural tangent to go down to ask us if we were interested in doing the music. We’re also working on some other things that we can’t really talk about, but it’s more film work, so it’s a really nice thing to be getting on with, while on tour.
I’m really interested to see the film, I think it’ll be really exciting. So lastly Gwil, the terms ‘boffin rock’ and ‘indie-lectual’ – how much pressure has that put on you? Do you think, ‘oh shit, they think we’re really
clever’? You’ve got something to uphold here, haven’t you?! [LAUGHS] I think, er [LAUGHS AGAIN], I think it’s quite funny because we’re not stupid, but we’re not really super smart, I mean, I would never use the term ‘geek’ or ‘nerd’ to describe any of us really, because I think that term is far more of an honour than we would really deserve. I think it’s more of just a cultural stereotype: people who went to university, some of them wear glasses and maybe, I suppose, we’re better than some bands at articulating ourselves. Tat leads to this label, but I don’t think it’s accurate – I think it’s more lazy journalism.
I guess the best indication we could have though is, would your parents say you’re boffins? Erm… No. As individuals as well, we’re all very different – some of us are definitely more boffiny than others, but I don’t think any of our parents would call us boffins, no. Tere you go, parent knowledge.
Emma R. Garwood
www.latitudefestival.co.uk. Read the uncut version of this interview on
Outlineonline.co.uk
BBC Radio 6Music Stage at Latitude Festival on Saturday 20th July. For tickets, go to
headline the
Alt-J
14 /July 2013/
outlineonline.co.uk
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