Art-rock three-piece Alt-J paid a visit to the University Philosophical Society (the Phil) yesterday after the second night of their three-night stint of gigs in the Olympia Theatre. I met Joe Newman and Gus Unger-Hamilton (Drummer Thom Sonny Green didn’t speak for the entire day to preserve his voice) in the Phil Council Room in the Graduates Memorial Building (GMB) for a quick chat after their talk.
The band’s manager is palpably nervous about the cabal of adoring students buzzing towards the band, an endless procession pleading for photographs, but frontman Joe and keyboardist Gus are undisturbed and enthusiastically answer my questions about their latest album, Reduxer, with undivided attention.
Reduxer, a reworking of the band’s previous album, Relaxer, was released at the end of September and features a whole host of hip hop’s most prominent, from Danny Brown to Pusha T, and even Dublin’s own Rejjie Snow. The tracks often bear slim resemblance to their former Relaxer selves, with their tempos hiked up, synthesizers contorted and flavours reimagined for another audience altogether, but the band tells me it’s not as alien as it seems. “Hip hop has always been an integral part of our music, it’s always been there in the rhythms and synths, and this project is something that we’ve always wanted to do.” Joe had previously cited some of his earliest influences as West coast gangster rap and the beginnings of English hip hop in the early 1990s – he has come a long way to be now collaborating with the abstract, vocally eccentric Danny Brown.
“We approached the artists first”, Gus tells me, laughing at the fact I’d thought that maybe the controversial Pusha T had approached them. “We sent those who seemed interested some of our tracks, and then they and their producers remixed them and recorded on top of them. It went from us to them, then they’d send it onto their producers, and back around again until we got it just right”. “We had to go to them”, Newman chimes in, “they’re very, very busy, but we’re so happy and grateful to have had them work on the album, we’re big fans of theirs and I think they all smashed it”. The pair nod in proud agreement, still giddy about the recent release. “Any small moment of their time was a real coup for us.”
Though clearly excited by breaking of new ground, the duo don’t see a future for themselves in hip hop. “In terms of getting into producing hip hop, Gus and I, I think probably not”, Joe tells me, “but Thom is heavily involved in producing our own music, so who knows where he’ll end up in the next few years – he’s definitely interested”. The band is extremely down to earth, taking time to get pictures with their fans and answering their questions before coming up to the council room. Before they leave for lunch, I ask them in a moment of fandom if their debut album, An Awesome Wave, is a reference to Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. They both nod, smiling, and tell me it’s one of their favourite books. “Have you read it?”, Joe asks, and he agrees that it’s far better than the film. “All of that great writing, you can’t really get it all across on a screen.”
The band looked relaxed accepting their award from the Phil, truly settled into their brief Dublin residency, far from the exhausted look of most touring bands. “The Olympia gigs have been awesome. The venue is great, and we always look forward to playing in Dublin”, says Gus. “Three gigs is three times as good!” Anyone lucky enough to attend their talk was offered a comprehensive insight into the band’s songwriting process and recording habits. “We’ve always been a recording band, because recordings are what will outlast everything. We don’t do the whole showbiz thing, so we’re very lucky to be in a famous band but not be famous people. We can just go to the pub or the supermarket and live normal lives.” From the outside, Alt-J could easily be seen as caricatures of “artists” in the high-brow sense, but in reality it’s blatantly clear that they’re just talented, friendly folk who happen to make avant garde pop music. “Concentrate on your songs”, Joe tells aspiring musicians in the crowd: “Forget the image, all of that will come when it needs to. Find what really moves you and stick to it”.
