Clean Bandit’s getaway from The Kambar to the US

Fans can expect “some new music, lots of pyrotechnics, some strings, all the hits and a lot of fun” when Clean Bandit return to Cambridge on Monday.

Clean Bandit are Grace Chatto, and brothers Jack and Luke Patterson. They formed in Cambridge in 2008.

Best known for their chart-topping, Grammy award-winning smash hit Rather Be, which featured Jess Glynne on vocals, the group have sold 13 million singles worldwide and shifted 1.6 million copies of their debut album New Eyes.

Their recent single, Symphony (featuring Zara Larsson), went straight to number one, showing the group have no desire to slow down.

Jack told the Cambridge Independent: “It’s all very amazing that that’s happened and we’re always just so grateful to all our fans for kind of, you know, listening to our songs so many times but ‘how have we dealt with that success?’

“[You’ve] just gotta keep on going, keep on making music. It’s given us a new drive to actually make music, having such a wonderful reception from our fans and from people, that’s inspired us to do more stuff and that’s what we’re doing and what we will keep doing.”

Grace, Jack, Luke and Neil Amin-Smith, who left the band in 2016, met while undergraduates at Jesus College, Cambridge.

“The band started when Grace and I were in our final year – well it was my final year, Grace had a few more years – and we wanted to play some music together,” said Jack.

“Grace had a string quartet and I’d been experimenting; recording her quartet and adding beats and basslines and we were working with an amazing vocalist called ‘Luv Sega’ as well, and we wrote a load of music and put it together for a club night.

“It was all very quick and that club night was at The Kambar (Wheeler Street) and it was called National Rail Disco. We set it up specifically to perform because we thought no one else would book us – and it was fantastic and we loved it, and that was kinda the spark that started it all off.”

And the band are looking forward to heading back to the city as part of their latest tour.

“Absolutely love coming to Cambridge. It’s lots of nostalgia for us when we come there,” said Jack.

When Jack spoke to the Cambridge Independent, the band were out in the US finishing off the video for their new single.

Jack explained: “I’m trying to finish a new video we’ve been working on for our new single which is called I Miss You, which features Julia Michaels the ‘superstar singer-songwriter from Los Angeles’, [and I’m] desperately trying to finish it in time to go on tour – looking slimmer and slimmer – but, by the time this is out, the video will be out and it will all be fine.”

Clean Bandit are an electronic, classical crossover, electropop and dance-pop band. The band mixes electronic music with classical pieces by composers such as Mozart and Shostakovich. Grace and Jack formed their own film production company, Cleanfilm, to make music videos for themselves and other artists.

So what advice does Jack have for aspiring musicians?

“Practise your scales, practise your rudiments, be an interdisciplinary musician. Don’t just get too bogged down in music. Make sure about all the other stuff that you have to do to support your music as a business. That’s been the biggest thing we learnt at the beginning when we were making music videos.

“It was the only way that that allowed us to actually get that kind of bigger platform so yeah, you gotta kind of get your fingers in every pie.”

Clean Bandit are at Cambridge Corn Exchange on Monday, October 30. Tickets are sold out.