Alt-J's Mercury prize win marks rise of boffin rock

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/nov/02/alt-j-mercury-prize-win

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"We had rather a late night, yeah," laughs Gus Unger-Hamilton, keyboard player with Alt-J, winners of the Mercury prize for their album An Awesome Wave. "I think I got in at about 7.30am. We ended up in east London at one of our record label people's flat where we had a boogie to some seriously smooth R&B."

Alt-J, a four-piece band who met at Leeds University, where three of them studied fine art and the other took English literature, are many things, but purveyors of smooth R&B they are not. With its complex lattice of styles, songs about geometric shapes and allusions to literature and film, An Awesome Wave was the bookmakers' choice for the prize ever since the Mercury shortlist was announced in September.

This was a surprise in itself. When the album was released in May, it failed to gain a single broadsheet newspaper review, while in one magazine the record was pointedly dismissed for its "pompous whimsy".

Did Alt-J – who took their name from the shortcut for a delta sign on an Apple Mac keyboard – have any inkling of what would happen on Thursday night?

"None whatsoever," says Unger-Hamilton. "When it came to the announcement we could see [presenter] Lauren Laverne form an 'alt-j' shape with her mouth and it was like, 'Oh my God, I think we've won!' It was a bit like a shell going off in a trench. I think I've repressed the feeling – it was too traumatic and overwhelming."

Unger-Hamilton was convinced his band were not going to win. "There were all these rumours flying round the room: 'No, no, no - it's Plan B, it's Plan B." Twenty minutes later everyone's going, "Richard Hawley's got it, it's obvious.'"

Did he have a flutter on himself at the bookies? "No!" he says, recalling the 4/5 odds. "We wouldn't have won very much."

Despite some criticism about this year's Mercury shortlist being unadventurous, Unger-Hamilton considers the lineup to have been strong, conceding that there could have been a greater showing for electronic artists. "There were under-represented genres," he says, "but it's a subjective thing. It's chosen by humans, not a computer or a quango. That makes sure it's diverse in every way."

The presence of Alt-J and another fast-rising outfit, Django Django, on the list of nominees suggests more chances now for the conventional four- or five-piece band after years of dominance in the industry by solo female stars such as Amy Winehouse and Adele.

Unger-Hamilton accepts the "boffin-rock" tag that has been attached to Alt-J and agrees that they are almost an anti-Oasis, with songs, not about cigarettes and alcohol but war photographers and foreign cinema.

"After the success of the first Kaiser Chiefs album in the mid-noughties there came a lot of dross – rubbish landfill indie," he says. "I would hate for that to happen again," he adds.

Alt-J's success is also a triumph for their independent record label, Infectious. Unger-Hamilton's brother runs Polydor, part of the Universal Music Group, but, he says, signing with his sibling's label "was never on the cards".

"He thought [signing to Infectious] was a great move for us and thought it would be best for us to sign to an indie," the keyboard player says.

Korda Marshall couldn't agree more. The head of Infectious, he believes Alt-J's Mercury win is a triumph for indie labels everywhere. "It's like David beating Goliath," he says.

"We're punching way beyond our weight but it's lovely, amazing."

He attributes An Awesome Wave's success – not just the Mercury prize but 100,000 sales in the UK and 75,000 more abroad – partly to the enduring power of mainstream radio, which shared his appreciation of the album as an art form in what he calls the "single-track economy". "It's very rare that I do this but Radio  1 should be given credit for championing a band when nobody else would," he says, "especially when your strategy is to sell an album, not singles. Radio 1 got that right away."

He also praises his team's creative approach to marketing and awareness of the increasing importance of digital media.

"We had to fire the press officer because they couldn't get anyone to review it in the papers," he grimaces, adding: "We took risks that major labels don't in terms of strategy. We streamed the whole album ahead of release on SoundCloud, which a major would never do. We made an origami version of the CD – a major label wouldn't have done that. We focused on online – we haven't done one print advert in a single magazine. I don't believe putting adverts in a magazine like NME works."

There is now "a level playing-field" in this digital age, he says, when the majors "no longer control the means of distribution". Of course, it helps that Infectious have a group like Alt-J, "a fantastic band who haven't stopped working since the day we signed them".

Will the band stop working long enough to enjoy their success? How will they spend the £20,000 prize?

"We're planning to fly our parents to the same place in the world and buy them all an expensive dinner," says Unger-Hamilton.

No plans for rock'n'roll excess, then?

"No, we're still on tour, working hard," he says. "We're trying to honour our commitments and play great gigs for the people who come to see us. We're quite a tame band. If somebody's late for the bus, they get all sorts of disapproving looks. We don't tolerate very much rock'n'roll excess in this band. We have quite a strong work ethic, and having got this far that's how we intend to continue."

He laughs off the idea of a "Mercury Curse" – previous recipients of the award such as Gomez and Roni Size have all but disappeared without trace – saying: "It's an eccentric, idiosyncratic prize, and I like the way it doesn't always create megastars".

So is theirs a triumph for indie/DIY ideals over corporate muscle?

"It's nice that a band on an indie won because it feels right," he says. "Although I don't think the winner should be based on the backstory, I do think when an artist from a major label wins you think, 'Oh, OK, there you go.' It's nice to have a band on an indie win."