An Awesome Wave

Alt-J (sometimes stylised ∆) was formed when Gwil Sainsbury (guitar, bass), Joe Newman (guitar, vocals), Gus Unger-Hamilton (keyboards) and Thom Green (drums) met at Leeds, UK University in 2007. The band currently resides in Cambridge. Sainsbury studied English Literature; the other three Fine Art. In their second year of studies, Newman showed Sainsbury a handful of his own songs inspired by his guitar-playing dad and hallucinogens, and the pair began recording in their dorm rooms with Sainsbury acting as producer on Garageband. First as Daljit Dhaliwal and then as Films, the four friends spent the next two years playing around town. Their eponymous first 4-track demo ∆, was ...