Biography

Alt-J (also known as ?) is an English indie rock quartet, formed in 2007 in Leeds, England. Their debut album An Awesome Wave was released in May 2012 in Europe and September 2012 in the United States and won the 2012 British Mercury Prize. Alt-J was formed when Gwil Sainsbury (guitar/bass), Joe Newman(guitar/vocals), Gus Unger-Hamilton (keyboards) and Thom Green (drums) met at Leeds University in 2007. Unger-Hamilton studied English Literature, the other three Fine Art.

In their second year of studies, Newman showed Sainsbury a handful of his own songs and, inspired by his guitar-playing dad, the pair began recording in their hall’s room with Sainsbury acting as producer on GarageBand. The band’s unusual sound stems from the fact that due to living in student halls, noise had to be kept to a minimum and so they were unable to use bass guitars or bass drums.

After graduating, they moved to Cambridge; however, they recorded their debut album in Brixton, playing tracks as it fit into the recording studios spare time. The quartet spent two years rehearsing before signing a deal with Infectious Records in 2011. The name “Alt-J” can be typed on Apple Mac OS X by the key sequence alt + J. “Alt-J” were formerly known as both ‘Daljit Dhaliwal’ and ‘Films’,but were later forced to change it to “Alt-J” because an American band called ‘The Films’ already existed.

Several of their tracks including Something Good and Fitzpleasure have been used for BBC 2’s channel idents.
In mid-2013, Nokia used the track Fitzpleasure in their commercial for the Lumia 925 in Europe and Lumia 928 in the US. Fitzpleasure was also used in the UK trailer for The Way, Way Back.