Keyboard shortcut band of the month

If you read the cool music blogs by people who like cool music, you'll no doubt be aware of Alt-J, a really cool new band from cool town. As you can see from the picture above, they are are furiously independent and eschew society's straitjacketed expectations of what a rock band should be. And get this - their name isn't even Alt-J at all! It is the typographically hard-to-render ∆, which is the symbol that comes up on an Apple Mac if you press the 'Alt' and 'J' keys simultaneously. These guys are quite literally mad!!!!!!!

But I shouldn't mock. As it turns out, Alt-J (sorry, ∆) have written some really infectious, intricate math-rock that deserves attention. And anyway, didn't Prince get away with being called for half a decade because he was having a big old sulk with his record company?

Still, I'm looking forward to a glut of keyboard shortcut bands over the next couple of months. Here are a few suggestions from the standard Windows character set.

Alt + 2	☻
Alt + 14	♫
Alt + 21	§
Alt + 176	░
Alt + 168	¿
Alt + 0156	œ

Hmmm... How about we just get on with the song? It's called Breezeblock and it's out on 21st May, by which time you should have got used to the vocalist's peculiarly acrobatic "technique". The video is a bit grizzly, but very much worth your time.

Alt-J - Breezeblock

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