Popping Up: Clean Bandit

Jun 18th, 2014 // Comment

Something Extraordinary

This story is from Idolator

Without a doubt, Clean Bandit have stepped into the forefront of the current house music revival that’s coming out of Europe and infiltrating the American airwaves. But this British quartet has done so by adding a unique twist to the genre: they blend classical music with their beats. Those beautiful strings you hear on the band’s hits like “Rather Be” and “Extraordinary” are of course real, not digitally replicated.

Clean Bandit’s debut LP New Eyes was released this week (buy it here) and comes packed with enough dancefloor fodder and featured vocalists — many of them brand new talents — to give the group’s contemporaries like Rudimental and Disclosure some stiff competition. What gives the record an edge is the classical training of band members Grace Chatto (above photo, middle) and Neil Amin-Smith (far right) and their colleague Jack Patterson‘s (second from left) ability to mold their sound into something entirely club-ready.

To get a better understanding of the new musical force that is Clean Bandit, we rang up violinist Amin-Smith to get the story behind UK band and their album New Eyes.

MEMBERS: Jack Patterson, Luke Patterson, Grace Chatto, Milan Neil Amin-Smith.

HOW YOU KNOW THEM: Clean Bandit’s breakthrough smash “Rather Be,” featuring Jess Glynne (of Route 94′s “My Love”) on vocals, hit #1 all around the world earlier this year. It’s currently a Top 10 dance chart hit in the States.

Here’s the song New Eyes, album title song, featuring Lizzo