Mixing folk, hip-hop, rock and electronic genres, the Alt-J group likes to surprise while keeping a style of its own. Released in June, their latest album Relaxer is at the crossroads of their influences. Cool meeting with the group.
They have come a long way since their beginnings. From their meeting in a university laundromat in Leeds, England, to their visit to the main stage of the Sziget Festival, the band Alt-J looks back for us on 10 years of stage and three albums to their credit, including Relaxer, released last June.
How did you meet? Are we talking about a university laundromat?
Yes, that's kind of it. In fact, we were just meeting, before forming the group, in different places. We saw each other at a party and then we met all over the place, including at the university laundromat, and other places, several times.
You called your music "Jump Folk", can you define that term?
It's an expression we invented when we were still in college, we don't really use it anymore even if we used it for 6 or 7 years. It was a way of describing oneself when one had the impression of not fitting into a particular predefined genre. It means: a little folk, a little electro, and other things…
You also said that your music was made to be listened to with headphones, lying on your bed and a little stoned. Is that the vision you have of your music?
Indeed, it is something that has been said. It's good to listen to it on headphones if you feel like getting high while smoking weed and it can help you access the album in a kind of experience where you get out of your body. Generally, we compose when we are sober, even if we smoked while writing the album. What's important in our process is that we're friends who write music together in a kind of alchemy. We didn't write the music thinking it would be nice to be stoned while listening to it, we just write the music we like, that's all.
At first, you said you lacked confidence on stage, is it better?
We lacked the confidence to play live at first, we didn't feel like it was what we did best. We felt like we weren't representing what we thought was good music well on stage. But now we feel like we've become a good live band, we've made enough albums to put together a live that holds up, with a good mix of more energetic songs and cooler ones. When you listen to Relaxer, you hear songs that wouldn't work on a festival stage, that's why it's good to listen to the album on headphones, or on speakers at home. For the live, we selected the songs that are best suited to the scene. We are much more confident today because we have enough songs to compose a live and make a set that sends!
How did you compose this last album?
Our approach was the same for the last album: a three-way collaboration. We get together, like when we were in college. It's pretty simple actually.
This album contains only 8 tracks, is it intentional?
Many albums including very good albums do not have many titles like Astral Weeks by Van Morrison, which also has only 8 titles. The length of the album is normal actually. We have the impression that we live in a playlist culture and that albums in terms of number of tracks have become longer and longer. We stayed more traditional.
In the digital age, there is no longer a limit on the length of time an album can have. You can even make an album that lasts an hour and a half if you want. Before, it was not possible because of the vinyl, cassette or CD support. I think this album has a pretty retro feel, given the illustrations and the production. We recorded it on tape, we gave the cover a look of the 60s and 70s, we thought that a playlist of 8 tracks, it fit well with this spirit.
Precisely, the artwork of Relaxer looks like a kind of video game of the 80s…
Yes, it's like a video game. The album has some aspects of a video game, in the sense that it is a world to explore with different areas in which you can get lost, where you walk. A bit like Zelda for example, where we move on a giant map that is composed of several worlds. The songs are set in certain places and moments such as House of the Rising Sun or Pleader: in a mining village in Wales in the nineteenth century, in a field in the north of England, during a night near a campfire … All this like scenes from a video game.
Your music could very well be similar to film music, is that something you would like?
We're all fans of movies in the band and I think we get a lot of inspiration from cinema. With our musical training and Gus's classical training, we are able to create quite cinematic music. I wouldn't say no to proposals to work in cinema and create soundtracks. I've done it before but it's just a bit difficult because it's not our "baby", it's a shared child and often it means sacrificing some things that may seem to be the most important to us for the film. So for now, we are not considering it, but if in the future we find a director we really like and who allows us to do everything we want to do without getting involved, then why not, one day.
Do you have anyone in mind?
Today, I don't see a director I'd really like to work with… at least at the moment. I am not able to name one. I think it would happen in a natural way, by meeting someone with whom you get along, who has an idea for a project that you need. But just to answer the question, Jonathan Glazer would be cool. Except that Glazer seems to have already developed a good relationship with Mica Levi, then we are not household breakers!
The song "In Cold Blood" is an old song from the first album? Why did you wait so long to get it out?
It was an old song but it wasn't ready, not really finished. We tried it for the first album but it wasn't that. We redid it for the second one and it wasn't good yet. There, we succeeded. Sometimes it takes time, no matter what field you create: when you write books, you can have an idea and have started working on it twenty years ago, and you don't finish, you come back to it, you try things to make it work, and then finally it ends up being good. That's how it went.
Enough about the past, what is the future for you?
We're going to be on tour until the end of 2018, so we don't really have any other plans at the moment. There will obviously be a fourth album. We touch wood, but it will not be for now. We'il see.
Interview by Louis Rayssac and Simona Anzelmo
