Bladnoch Dragon Series is Tessellate by Alt-J

Complex mathematics, an obsession with triangles, NASA and dragons

In the opening chapter, or rather iteration, of Michael Crichton’s novel Jurassic Park, the character of Ian Malcolm, a scientist and specialist in Chaos Theory, says: “At the earliest drawings of the fractal curve, few clues to the underlying mathematical structure will be seen.”

The quote sits under a drawing of the first iteration of a fractal known as a Dragon Curve.

Discovered by a NASA physicist John Heighway in 1966, the Dragon Curve was the result of an idle wondering about what would happen if you folded a one dollar bill repeatedly.

According to Heighway’s colleague William Harter “Jack came into my office (actually cubicle) and said that if you folded a $1 bill repeatedly he thought it would make a random walk or something like that. I was dubious but said ‘‘Let’s check it out with a big piece of paper.’’... Well, it made a funny pattern alright, but we couldn’t really see it too clearly. So one of us thought to use tracing paper and ‘‘unfold’’ it indefinitely so we could record (tediously) as big a pattern as we wanted. But each time we made the next order, it just begged us to make one more!”

As the folds unfold, it tessellates, making a pattern that never crosses itself and that looks a little like a dragon. Hence its name.

The character of Ian Malcolm’s point in Jurassic Park is that however simple the initial action might seem, you can’t always predict the complexity that might follow.

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In the late 2000s, Joe Newman left his home city of Southampton and headed north to Leeds to start university. In an effort to remain connected to his friends from home, he began sharing his own songs on Myspace. According to an interview with Loud and Quiet, the logic was that it would give everyone something to talk about on his return.

He met Gwil Sainsbury in his first year – the pair were both studying Fine Art. “We just wanted to make a few recordings. We never really intended to be a band; we were just venting and doing some creative stuff on top of our course work,” said Sainsbury in an early interview. Gus Unger-Hamilton and Thom Green joined and the four formed a band – FILMS.

Unfortunately for them, there was a garage band based out of South Carolina with the same name and when the Leeds quartet came to feature on the line up for Live at Leeds, the bio was that of the US band.

So they changed their name. “We’ve always had a bit of a thing about triangles,” said Sainsbury. “It just happened that I was trying to make a triangle on my computer. You press alt-J on the keyboard and you get a little symbol called a Delta sign.” The band’s name became that Delta sign, Alt-J.

There was something obstinately difficult about them choosing a symbol as a name, with Newman telling one interviewer: “People have to work out what we’re called, make the symbol on the computer – get pissed off if they can’t – it’s like a little road test to find us”.

Reflecting on that time, Unger-Hamilton told New Sounds in 2022, “Back in 2012 we were writing for ourselves, we almost felt like our songs were messages in bottles that we were chucking into the sea, not knowing if anyone was going to read them.”

Yet find them and read them, people did. In 2012, five years on from forming, the band were awarded the Mercury Music Prize for their debut album An Awesome Wave, which sold a million copies in the US alone.

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With every fractal, the premise is simple, but the outcome is complex. So it is with whisky. At every decision point, every iteration point if you like there is the possibility of change. Dr Nick Savage, master distiller at Bladnoch distillery in Scotland’s lowlands – fascinated by this idea – decided to release a series of single malts called The Dragon Series that demonstrate this effect on the liquid.

The series is made up of five single malts, each named for a moment of iteration: The Field highlighting the grain that’s fermented to be distilled; The Spirit which focuses on the stills and process of distillation; The Casks, whose wood enhances and shapes the character of the liquid inside them; The Ageing which determines what flavours remain and which are lost; and then finally The Decision made by the master distiller that the time to end the process, and bottle the whisky, is now.

Each bottling makes a virtue out of what might be seemingly chaotic and unpredictable, the variability encountered throughout the whisky making process.

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Bladnoch’s Dragon Series is Tessellate by Alt-J. Initially simple and ordered, then chaotic, resolving again into a clear pattern, this is the joy of fractals. Just as triangles will neatly tessellate, so several Dragon Curves – seemingly irregular as they are – will slot together to fill a plane.

“I think the thing that most interests us is those decorative bits,” Newman told Loud and Quiet. “...we should treat that moment, even though it’s fleeting and only happens once, like it’s a hook that happens over and over again.”

It’s the possibility of fractals that makes them compelling. As the character of Ian Malcolm says in Jurassic Park: “The fractal idea of sameness carries within it an aspect of recursion, a kind of doubling back on itself, which means that events are unpredictable. That they can change suddenly, and without warning.”

Just as Heighway and Hartner found the paper begging them to make one more iteration, makers of whisky can’t resist tweaking distillation for different results, and musicians can’t help but repeat the riff.