In conversation with Alt-J’s Gus Unger-Hamilton ahead of the new release ‘The Dream’

Benjamin Forrest on 11 February 2022

Leeds-originated folktronica trio alt-J are set to release their fourth studio album, entitled The Dream, today. Ahead of the release, I spoke to keyboard player and backing vocalist (as well as past Gryphon contributor) Gus Unger-Hamilton to gain an insight into the production of the new album and to look back on his time within the group. 

alt-J formed as a quartet in 2007, at which time all members were studying at the University of Leeds. Gus explained, “Joe came to University with the express intention of wanting to start a band. Unbeknownst to us, he was kind of interviewing us in the first few weeks to see if we’d be suitable candidates to be in his band.”. Seemingly, the establishing of alt-J as a band happened pretty quickly after the four initially met, “We met at a party in halls on the first night of freshers’ week, then Joe met Thom and Gwilym on their course doing Fine Art. Joe started making music with Gwilym at first and then he asked me and Thom to get involved too. By the beginning of second year, we were fully up and running as a band.”.

Each alt-J album thus far has seemed very much like separate, respective projects – whilst there are similarities between them all, alt-J are certainly not a group which churns out the same album every few years. The Dream is certainly no exception to this rule. Asked about the musical evolution of the group Gus said, “We like to try keep ourselves interested in the band. I think because we’re all people with quite eclectic taste in music and quite inquisitive natures, we just naturally do end up constantly evolving. Innovation for innovations sake often doesn’t sound that good but I suppose we do talk quite a lot in the studio about trying to offer our fans new things here and there, to try to avoid falling into making a ‘clichéd alt-J song’ which we have, in the past, come close to doing before going ‘hang on, this sounds a bit like we’re repeating ourselves a bit here, how can we make this more interesting?”. There is not an abundance of groups which sound like alt-J, they have a fearlessly original sound. On the topic of influences, then, Gus gave an explanation for the recognisable and original ‘alt-J sound’ saying, “We all had a healthy love of Radiohead which was important, not just for the sound but also the kind of approach they had to making music, which was constant evolution and extreme musicianship, but with a very poppy finish with very good hooks and stuff. I think we’re a product of all of our musical backgrounds; me on the more classical side, Joe on the folky Americana side and Thom on the heavy metal side – I think that all those three things coming together create a sort of magic alt-J potion that you might not have expected to happen.”. 

The Dream is the fourth album from alt-J to be released on independent label Infectious Music. Gus spoke about how the trio’s relationship with Infectious was forged, “We had lots of major labels show and interest in us and come to Leeds to meet us, come to our gigs to watch us, come watch us rehearse and stuff and then they all kind of said the same thing which was, ‘We really like you, but we don’t know if it’s gonna sell’. So, in the end we got two offers from indies: Infectious and PIAS, and we went with Infectious.”. Although the label was acquired by BMG around the time of the band’s second album This Is All Yours, Gus explained that the band are still awarded the kind of creative freedom that comes with an independent label, “We were able to take that creative freedom and bring it into a more major label setup which we have now with BMG – BMG is still technically an independent label but Infectious, when we signed to it, was like five people in an office in Soho above Ronnie Scott’s, and now it’s a big office with hundreds of people. We have a licensing deal with Atlantic Warner in America which is a major major label, but they’ve had to accept the terms on which we signed our record deal which was ‘leave us alone, let us do our own thing’, so we’ve been quite lucky in that respect.”. 

Aside from the music itself, another thing which fans love about alt-J is the iconography and artwork employed by the group. The artwork for The Dream feels like a new artistic direction for the band in comparison to previous album covers. According to Gus, however, the chosen artwork was not the group’s first choice, “Our first choice was actually a Picasso painting called ‘The Dream’ but it was just gonna be too difficult to use a Picasso painting, we had set ourselves a bit of an impossible task, because you’ve got the Picasso estate, the owner of the painting, the gallery the painting is in – it’s just paperwork. We attempted to do it and pretty much immediately realised it was gonna be, what you might call, a complete fucking nightmare.”. The final cover is credited to artist Joel Wyllie, Gus discussed the process which led the group to this image, saying “We all owned some of his drawings and we asked him to send us some new work and he sent us some drawings, and this was one of them. We just really liked it, it’s quite an ambiguous image, this unspecified semi-human creature engaged in an unspecified activity. I think we liked that about it – it’s open to interpretation, a bit like the music.”. 

Picasso’s ‘The Dream’ (left) was the original choice for the album cover

Speaking of the music, The Dream is perhaps alt-J’s most mature album thus far, and the single ‘Get Better’ stands out amongst the band’s discography as particularly heart-breaking. I asked Gus about the band’s initial reaction when ‘Get Better’ was proposed by lead singer Joe, “Joe played me that song and I had a very emotional response to it. I cried for quite a long time, which had never really happened to me before with any song really – let alone an alt-J song. I think it’s amazing that Joe was able to access these emotional depths without actually experiencing directly what the song is talking about, so that’s the real gift that he has I suppose.”. Mind you, you need not look far on this album for evidence of Joe’s extraordinary song-writing ability. Gus suggested that this ability might be thanks, in part, to the influence of psychedelic drugs, “Joe did have an experience at Uni where he took mushrooms for the first time and had a pretty crazy time, he thinks he experienced ego death. He’s adamant that he came back from that experience and his song writing ability had improved a huge amount. Before that, he was a good songwriter, but he came back from that and started writing really interesting, dark songs – Tesselate is the first song he wrote after that experience.”. Looking at the band’s early work, and particularly the album cover for debut album An Awesome Wave, it would be easy to assume that psychedelics played a large role in the creation of alt-J, but according to Gus “We’ve never really been into psychedelics… we used to smoke weed when we wrote but that’s not something we do anymore because we’re all boring and in our thirties now. I feel like there is a healthy background of mind-expanding drugs but it’s not a big part of our process nowadays.”

An Awesome Wave, the group’s debut album, earned them a Mercury Music Prize in 2012. Their third album Relaxer (2017) was also nominated for the Mercury Prize. It would come as no surprise then if The Dreamwas also to be shortlisted for the award this year. Asked whether the group attaches much importance to these awards and accolades, Gus responded, “We’re extremely proud of the prizes we’ve won. We would love to win the Mercury Prize again; I can’t deny that. It would be incredible, but prizes are a very arbitrary thing and ultimately you can’t really think about it too much. All we can do is do our best in the studio and hope that maybe some accolades will follow but we shall have to see.”. 

The Dream is released on the 11th February through Infectious Music/BMG and is available to order from local independent record stores Jumbo Records and Crash Records. The trio will also be returning to their spiritual home of Leeds for a show at the O2 Academy on the 9th May as part of their tour of the UK and Ireland which runs throughout May. 

Black Lives Matter, Covid-19 and the Arts: An Interview with BBC Two Channel Controller Patrick Holland

Owen Frost on 13 July 2020

Owen Frost sits down (virtually) with Patrick Holland, Controller of BBC 2, to discuss his channel’s policies regarding Black Lives Matter and the increasing importance of history in public broadcasting.

Owen: Hi Patrick, can you tell the readership a little bit about what your role is at the BBC and what you do?

Patrick Holland: My name is Patrick Holland and I am the controller of BBC Two. I also look after BBC Four, commissioning programmes there as well. As a Channel Controller, I work to commission programmes from across a wide range of genres including documentaries, music, arts, drama, comedy and entertainment. Each of these genres has a controller of that particular genre who work with their team to develop ideas and then they discuss them with me about whether they commission them for BBC Two/BBC Four. There is a whole portfolio of channels at the BBC and I am very privileged to run one of them.

O: Hospital, which you commissioned when you first started out as Controller of BBC Two focuses on the crucial work the NHS continues to do in our country. What do you think the importance is of broadcasting shows about the NHS during the current pandemic?

PH: I developed Hospital as at the time we felt envious of 24 Hours in A&E on Channel Four’s success, but I wanted a series which explored what was really happening in the NHS – showing bed shortages and winter flu crises. Hospital has told these stories in a very interesting and humane way. One of the things that I am most proud of in the last year is the Covid-19 special that Label1 made – a two-part series inside the Royal Free Hospital. Staff and patients know the TV show now and know that it has that commitment to exploring what happens inside the NHS at large. The access they were able to achieve during Covid-19 and the stories they were able to tell, I think will really stand as one of the outstanding documentaries made during this terrible time.

Hospital Series One, (Image Credit: BBC2)

O: It certainly sounds like these programmes reflect issues of today. In light of the Black Lives Matter Movement and Edward Colston’s statue being torn down, do you have any more programmes planned which will inform the public about Britain’s colonialist past?

PH: Over the last few weeks we have repeated series from History on iPlayer so newer audiences have access to them. David Olusoga’s series Black and British: A Forgotten History tells of black people’s experience in the UK. David’s latest A House Through Time, part of a returning social history format we have on the channel, follows the inhabitants of a house over the centuries in particular parts of the UK. Series one was in Liverpool, series two was in Newcastle and series three was in Bristol. Olusoga’s series engages with the Colston statue and the place of the slave trade in A House Through Time weeks before the Black Lives Matter responded to the killing of George Floyd. I think that there has been some extraordinary output on the BBC that has attempted to explore the deep underpinnings of the slave trade and Britain’s role in the slave trade. One of the other things we have made is a massive £100 million commitment over three years to produce diverse and inclusive content. It is not just about telling stories of BAME experiences in history but it is also really important that the people who are making films are from BAME backgrounds and also different social classes because television, like lots of professions, is quite hard to get into and once you get there the profession can be quite precarious. As an industry, we are trying to search hard for answers to retain brilliant BAME people coming into television. We need to work hard to retain them, promote those people and find the best roles for them because they need to be the future leaders as much as everyone else.

O: The reality show School documented the ups and downs of the education system. Do you think you might ever produce a show about university students?

PH: We did a series last year called How to Break into the Elite with Amol Rajan (BBC News Media Editor). His question was how you break into competitive professions (media, law, banking) if you come from a background like his. He followed university leavers from different backgrounds and tried to assess what their chances were. He found a huge amount of low-level prejudice which was stopping people from entering professions and there were discriminations made at an early stage about CVs names and how you carry yourself in an interview. We have commissioned Amol to do another two-part series which follows up about young people’s experiences. It created quite a lot of debate. Looking at the experience of young people and what their life chances are is certainly what we’re interested in. I wouldn’t say no to an observational documentary with university students like we did with School!

How to Break into the Elite, (Image Credit: BBC 2)

O: It would seem like BBC 2 focuses on challenging shows which evoke thought about everyday things in an exploratory way?

PH: I think one of the key things we are trying to do is that we don’t want a presenter who is telling people how to think. I think people are far more sophisticated in their viewing habits. We want to immerse people inside these new stories in an observational way and let them make up their own minds.

O: Thank you very much for this.

PH: You’re welcome, thank you.

Featured Image Credit: Edinburgh TV Festival