Image via Complex Original
For those who haven’t yet been charmed by Grammy Award-winning British four-piece Clean Bandit, members Jack Patterson, Luke Patterson, Grace Chatto, and Milan Neil Amin-Smith are famous for melding classical music with the world of contemporary pop and EDM. On the cleverly titled “Mozart’s House,” for example, “String Quartet No. 21” is reimagined as a driving synth jam, with danceable percussion bolstering Mozart’s timeless string arrangement.
But Clean Bandit’s ambitions are greater than simply shaking up Shostakovich or re-mixing Mozart. Other tracks, such as the band’s recent Stylo G-featuring hit “Come Over,” see the band incorporating influences as wide as dancehall and reggae into their usual cello, violin, and keyboards setup. Considering how the band steals the show on stage and in the studio, it makes sense that Clean Bandit’s personal history would be just as fascinating as their sound. These are 10 facts you probably don’t know about the rising U.K. upstart group.
“Rather Be” stood out from the beginning, even for the band.
“Rather Be” was the band’s first major hit to make its way across the pond, but even before it rose to No. 10 in the U.S., the band had a good feeling about the track. “When we were playing it live we felt it stood out from the other new songs that we had at the time,” cellist Grace Chatto told Celebuzz. “That’s why we decided to release it, because everyone was kind of smiling and singing along, even though they were hearing it for the first time.” Due to a mix of punchy strings, compressed electronics, and a soaring chorus from Jess Glynne, the song managed to stay at No. 1 in the U.K. for four weeks, moving a whopping 1.13 million units.
Clean Bandit has a hidden Russian meaning.
Clean Bandit is an odd name for a pop band—to the point where members of a British game show once questioned if it was even real. As it turns out, however, it’s an appellation with an amusing story behind it. Band members Grace Chatto and Jack Patterson studied in Russia, where they picked up the phrase, which, meaning-wise, can loosely be translated to “complete bastard,” “total swine,” or “naughty rascal,” depending on who you ask. (It’s an affectionate term that you might call one of your more disreputable friends, though it doesn’t particularly sound that way.) Chatto and Patterson loved the term so much that they stuck with it when they formed the band.
The band started as a traditional string quartet.
Before Clean Bandit toured with Disclosure or wrote chart-topping pop songs, Milan Neil Amin-Smith and Grace Chatto were leading a string quartet while studying in college. Jack Patterson, who also happened to be dating Chatto, thought it would be fun to remix the music they were making, and the building blocks of the band were soon formed. In fact, the band’s first single, “Mozart’s House,” came from these recordings after another one of their friends, Ssegawa-Ssekintu “Love Segga” Kiwanuka, hopped on the track with some vocals. After roping in Jack’s brother Luke, the foursome was a fully-realized band and a much different sort of string quartet.
They once “almost electrocuted” model Lily Cole.
Clean Bandit’s video for “UK Shanty” features breathtaking coastal vistas and an appearance by superstar model Lily Cole. But in an interview with The Guardian, Jack Patterson told the story of how they decided to film some of the underwater scenes in their friend’s swimming pool, which was freezing at the time. “A friend of ours called Henry Stringer, who is a sculptor and insane genius, came up with this idea to weld four radiators together and pump water through them using a pond fountain pump,” said Patterson. “It became dangerous because someone unplugged the pump and if the boiling water had got inside it the whole pool could have gone live.” As it turns out, Lily Cole is very much alive and the band has a beautiful video to show for it.
Everyone in the band went to Cambridge.
It makes sense that a group built around classical music would be educated, so maybe it’s not a surprise that all four members of Clean Bandit attended England’s prestigious University of Cambridge. Then again, none of them actually wound up studying classical music. Instead, the band members have degrees in Russian, Italian, history, and architecture. While it’s not clear how that translates to their sound, it goes to show just how eclectic the members’ tastes are, both when it comes to their influences and their studies.
New Eyes had 12 different lead singers.
Every song on New Eyes has a different lead vocalist, including the ones where the band members sing. As Milan Neil Amin-Smith told Time Out, “every song has an almost different quality to it, and that’s really exciting for us.” But though they’ve roped in a number of well-known pop singers for their music already, there’s a laundry list of performers the band would love to work with in the future. “I think we all would love to work with Drake, Beyoncé, and maybe Woodkid one day,” Amin-Smith said.
Clean Bandit once partied with Ron Jeremy.
After a show at the L.A. venue The Roxy, the band went out for a night on the town. After a few drinks at the Rainbow Bar in West Hollywood, the band somehow wound up at a party with legendary porn star Ron Jeremy. (Jeremy proved he was the real deal by showing the band a trunk full of his most famous work.) “It was a wild night,” Grace Chatto told The Independent.
The band’s inspirations reach beyond classical.
While Clean Bandit is best known for rethinking classical music for the dance floor, the band is inspired by artists ranging from experimental electronic musicians to chart-topping pop stars—including Disclosure and Kidnap Kid, as well as Four Tet, Radiohead, Hudson Mohawke, and even Shakira. Although, when asked who he’d like to work with, dead or alive, Amin-Smith told British website Creation that it’d have to be Stevie Wonder.
Bassist Jack Patterson directs all the band’s music videos.
Not only does Jack Patterson play bass, keyboards, and sing in the band, he also directs the band’s music videos. Patterson went to film school for a year, and has since formed his own production company called Cleanfilm so he can make videos for both his own band and others. “Often we come up with the visual concepts at the same time as writing the music,” Patterson told Mashable in an interview. Though the videos are often visually arresting, the clip for “Mozart’s House” got the band in a bit of hot water when the school Grace Chatto was teaching at didn’t approve of a (very brief) not-quite-nude scene involving her cello. “There was a complaint from a parent that it was indecent,” Chatto told The Telegraph. “It was unbelievably cowardly and despicable,” said Patterson.
The members were friends (and family) before they were a band.
Not only did the band attend school together at Cambridge’s Jesus College, but they also share more than just a love of music. Jack and Luke Patterson are brothers who grew up in Northern England, and Jack and Grace Chatto began dating before the band even started. Chatto also happened to attend the prestigious Westminster high school with Milan Neil Amin-Smith. They also played music together as kids. “I had known Neil a little bit from when we were children and we used to play classical music together in our local orchestra at the Royal Academy of Music in London,” Chatto told Celebuzz. “We got together like that and did loads of stuff, and then Jack came on board.” After Jack brought in his brother, the band was ready to go.