praise for the man, “and corded with him. It was in an old abandoned work sumably the studio house over two floors, and he didn’t have a atmosphere for ∆’s I’ll say it again, fuck it: booth and a mixing desk, he just had a comfirst single, ‘Bloodflood’, he’s got a good pair of ears, puter and the instruments, and downwas an altogether more and his ears are really in tune stairs there was a gazebo where you dramatic affair. The track, with our music.” The band’s punctuated by the band’s first encounter with Andrew was could just hang out.” characteristic skittish drums and after a friend introduced them in 2009, and they had an opportunity If a relaxed and unorthominimal, reverberant guitars, has dox recording envisomething of a brooding, slightly to record with him, resulting in the ronment was what menacing tone in its choral chantslow-burning, drum-brushed ballading and gloomy imagery. Scheduled ‘Matilda’. birthed ‘Matfor launch in October, Bloodflood will be ilda,’ then prethe first single released by music magazine/ The good fortune this break afforded Charsporadic distributors, Loud & Quiet and, with them is not overlooked, though. “The lie the B-side of fan-favourite ‘Tessellate’, it’s a amazing thing is,” Gus recalls, “he’s Andrew, reasonable shout that it will prove to be an imthe first producer we’ve ever worked who has portant stepping stone. with, and we just went down there since reand really hit it off with him. located to And it’s about time, too. As, unusually for a band His studio in Shoreditch was Brixton. “He these days, ∆ have been keen to keep a fairly low incredible, we were so survived the riots” profile, allowing their music to speak for themlucky to be able to Joe reassures me, selves before committing to photoshoots and go down and which is a good job, record labels. get a track because his work and resubsequent friendship “I think a lot of bands’ first instinct when they first with the band has proved start recording tracks is to get a MySpace page instrumental in creating the before you’ve really recorded any songs, and that impressive, if still relatively was our instinct, we were by no means different,” minor, catalogue of Gus explains. “But when we changed our name to songs which alt-j we had nothing really to show for it, and are awardstarted looking at our online presence ing the from a different perspective” band de“With the name change,” conserved attentinues Joe, “we had a lot tion. “I always of interest from say this of the industry, Charlie,
18
”begins Joe, clearly keen to spread