709 Alt-J - An Awesome Wave (2012)

 709 Alt-J - An Awesome Wave (2012)

Studio Album - Alt-Pop



About the Act:

Alt-J is the Mac keyboard shortcut for the Greek letter Delta, a triangle. They have a thing about triangles. They are a band from Leeds, formed in 2007 and still going, with four albums released thus far.

About the Album:

This was their first album, it sold quite well and some critics were very complimentary. The cover is a composite of satellite images of the Ganges Delta - another triangle reference.

My History with this Album:

None

Review:

They remind me of somebody, but I cannot put my finger on who. It may be a band from an earlier review, or I am starting to think they remind me of something that got Radio 2 airplay around the time this was released. It's possible it was actually them, so maybe they remind me of themselves.

The singer's voice is really distinctive, but voices have fashions, and the style of his voice may have had several others with similar sounds around the same time. It's not unpleasant, but hard to make out words at times. Unfortunately I have no helpful way of describing it.

I can try to describe the music, however. It is quite "alternative" in that the sounds used are quite varied, and often minimal. It mostly has a feeling of gentle restraint, twiddly sounds and a Capella harmonies, with drumming only sometimes, and then with quite unusual drum patterns, The drum sounds used are quite tinny, making it sound quite drum-machine-like. Also quite "trippy", by which I mean an emphasis on snare rolls and complex patterns. Sometimes there is a big, thick, electronic-sounding bass, and sometimes there are strings (violin, cello). There's quite a lot of starting and stopping and changing textures and unusual song structures. In some ways it is odd, it is certainly not mainstream, and it's varied. However, I would say it works well, it creates an atmosphere, sometimes relaxed, sometimes darker, never really anything you could dance to. It's almost classical at times, and maybe a little folky.

Lyrically, hmm. Unusual, and although I didn't pick it up through listening (but from reading up), often telling dark stories. Certainly not your standard love songs.

Taken as a whole, I enjoyed the unusual-ness of it, and the variation, and the creation of feels and textures. I found it conventional enough to not be inaccessible, but unusual enough to be intriguing, and wondering what would happen next. I enjoyed it, quite a lot.

8/10 


Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/2AxfZb5aQHIXgsB1HA6OLL

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLFBEGPiMBa5vYxUKkRJ1KpcQH4rL6v0m

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Awesome_Wave



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