Alt-J on newfound fame and Mercury nods

In the new issue of Hot Press, we meet Alt-J's keyboard player Gus Unger-Hamilton, who chats about the band's meteoric rise to stardom, and of course the Mercury nomination they received for debut LP An Awesome Wave.

On the band's distinctive, psychadelic sound, and whether there's a drug element involved, he explains, “The whole hallucinogens thing was basically that in first year, Joe took mushrooms with his flatmate and had a really bad time. He had to go home to his parents for a few weeks and really wasn’t the same when he came back for a good year or so. I think it improved his songwriting if anything; something seemed to click in his brain, and his songs got much more mature and dark and interesting. That was probably quite important actually in how the band went, because his songs after that did change and he seemed to grow up a lot.”

Unger-Hamilton also chats about celeb fans... “Moby was at a gig recently, which was really cool. Yoko Ono follows us on Twitter! There have been a few people who’ve given us some really good support on Twitter – Harry Styles from One Direction mentioned us and we got about a thousand followers from that. Similarly Rizzle Kicks right now are quite keen on us. Ellie Goulding as well seems to be a fan, so we’ve got a nice little following in that respect.”

Read the full interview in the latest issue of Hot Press (Damien Dempsey cover), out today.