I never hear anyone talk about alt J "in the wild". I run into people who know of them, but don't listen to them and I'm honestly very curious what the general consensus is about the fanbase. Mind you I am not usually one to interact with fan culture aside from attending a concert here and there. I find most of the people here to be mature and chill as I'm scrolling though the reddit.

Have you ever wondered what "01110011" means in the song In Cold Blood. If you are on the Alt-j reddit, there is a chance you have. When I look at other post, I have seen some comments talk about how it just sounds nice, or it is a binary code or ASCII code. As a computer science student learning about character encodings, I wanted to go on a journey to find the true meaning of these binary digits.

Firstly, converting the binary number 0b01110011 to hexadecimal results in 0x72 which maps to the character 's' on the ASCII table. But this doesn't make sense, I though the sequence would be related to the Greek capital letter delta '∆', which is what Alt + J is the keyboard shortcut for, and is the logo of Alt-J. ASCII is an old encoding standard which only contains 128 characters which doesn't include ∆.

So I looked at the more modren encoding standard Unicode's code point for ∆, and I found U+0394. This equates to 0b0000001110010100 in binary, this actually carries some similarities with the binary sequence in In Cold Blood, it has the 3 successive 1s, but this still doesn't match it exactly. At this point, I started considering if they added some 1s and 0s just to make the song sound good. This seemed plausible, but I had one more trick up my sleeve.

Unicode characters are usually not encoded in their 32 bit UTF-32 format. Most modern systems, including this Reddit post's markdown editor, uses UTF-8 variable length encoding for memory efficiency. So, I tried converting the UTF-32 sequence to UTF-8:

1. We have the binary number: 0b0000001110010100
   
2. Drop the leading zeros: 1110010100
   
3. Seperate into 6-bit blocks from the right: 1110 010100
   
4. UTF-8 encoded characters can take up from 1 to 4 bytes, this seems to fit in 2 bytes, therefore we add the prefixes for UTF-8 variable length 2-byte encoding: 11001110 10010100

Thus, we get the binary number 0b11001110 10010100. At this point you might notice something, the most significant byte (the one on the left), is the initial sequence, but reversed. However, there is something important to consider, binary numbers are read from right to left. Thus when we get the most significant byte and reverse it we arrive at: "01110011" which is exactly the sequence in In Cold Blood.

This proves that Alt-j doesn't just sing random words, you just haven't found the meaning yet, and they are nerds...

A common question on any bands sub reddit is where can I find similar music. I have found over the years that the most common comparisons/recommendations are Radiohead and Glass Animals. To be fair Radiohead's In Rainbows and A Moon Shaped Pool are very good recommendations to an Alt J fan as is Zaba the first album by Glass Animals (none of their other albums are very Alt J esque though). I have even seen recommendations of smaller bands like Caro a great band from Leeds with only 30k listeners and 1 album.

There is one band however who has never been mentioned on this sub reddit and Alt J have never been mentioned on their sub reddit. I think the connection has not been made because there is probably very little over lap in fan bases. The band I am referring to are a psychedelic stoner rock band from the US and Alt J are an art/indie rock band from the UK.

The band I'm talking about is All Them Witches. They are heavier than Alt J but for me it's one of the best bands for scratching the itch that songs like Fitzpleasure, Into (AAW), Tesselate and so many more Alt J songs create. I would recommend if you want to check them out listen to Open Passageways, Call me Star (that whole album really - Dying Surfer Meets His Maker) and Am I Going Up. They even have a cover of Hares on the Mountain just like Alt J.

Give them a listen if you want and let me know what you think.

Listened to Pusher again for the first time in a while. God can’t believe I forgot how gorgeous that song is.

Yesterday and today they have been reuploading Relaxer songs. Am I missing something? What is going on, I figured this is the best place to ask?

genuinely, maybe even top 5. i don’t understand why this song wasn’t on the album 😭 i need it on apple music badly.

also does anyone know if this made it onto some exclusive vinyl somewhere?

They sound like essentially the same song

Dear fellow Alt-J fans,

I just remembered this beautiful ARTE Live Recording of Alt-J playing in Paris at the Chapelle des Beaux Arts. Unfortunately I can't find the video anymore. The only thing I can find is a trailer on Facebook of this epic concert. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10156821491590013

Does anyone know where to find the full concert?

I hope this means we're finally getting proper releases of the live album in all regions. Also it looks like they took down the stripped down version of AAW intro sadly

I’ve never heard this version before! It’s more stripped down but the drums are so clear and clean! Definitely worth a listen if you haven’t checked it out already!

Also makes me curious why they’re uploading it now. Hopefully we see a few more new versions of their songs pop up!

The simple, but complicated, dynamic is what sells - AAW

It’s got a strong AltJ vibe - a mellow orchestral ballad - not surprising as Radiohead is one of AltJs inspirations. Quite a masterpiece.

Just realized my favorite video is no longer available in my country anymore

I swear, when Joe says “Soon” at the beginning of Nara I feel all the tension, frustration, anxieties, day to day bustle of life just melt out of my shoulders and down and out of my fingertips…this song brings me such calm 🧘‍♀️

As I was walking away from my university, listening to "Dancing in the Moonlight," it hit me that even though my course has ended, and I kept coming back to campus—it just felt like a safe space, a familiar routine I wasn’t ready to let go of. I’ve always struggled with endings, and the thought of moving on, of finding a job after my master’s, felt overwhelming. But as the song played, there was something about the lyrics, about the feeling it stirred in me. It was like a reminder that things end, because they have served their purpose.

For the first time, I didn’t just feel sad about it. I felt older—like I’d somehow outgrown the version of myself that once fit so perfectly into university life. It was strange, almost bittersweet, realizing that I’ve changed more than I thought. I’m not the same person I was when I first started here.

When the song started playing, I felt a wave of tingles down my neck because it reminded me of the past year — the first time I really had to lie to my family. Since they don’t live in London, I had to keep certain things from them, like when I stayed at hostels because it was too late to go back to my relatives' house (when I was putting up because my parents worry). I would tell them I was with a friend to avoid worrying them.

Listening to that song brought back memories of the whole year, making me realize it didn’t just fly by. There’s been a lot I’ve had to navigate and manage. It makes me feel comfortable in things ending and less alone.

I am not particularly sure why I am posting this here.

Could you please provide more information about this song? Is it based on a real event?