News Clean Bandit: ‘I’m Pretty Clueless About What It All Means’

The UK charts are experiencing more than just a ‘good patch’. When you’ve had Rudimental, Daft Punk and Duke Dumont all sharing the top spot spoils so far this spring, you’ve little reason to ask for any more. Ok, maybe ‘Get Lucky’ could do with being the biggest-seller for the rest of eternity, but that outcome doesn’t seem entirely improbable just now. Besides, even a trawl down the Top 40 brings out the odd smile, especially when you see Clean Bandit’s ‘Mozart’s House’ finally making a mark.

It’s been a destined chart-botherer since it was penned in 2010, and when Jack Patterson and oft-collaborator Sseg whipped the camera out in Moscow they decided to start filming a now-famed music video for the track. Jack was working in the city at the time and they suddenly had the urge to “get some sketchy gig” in a divebar. “But there was actually this horrendous heatwave at the time,” Jack says. “All the promoters had disappeared out of the city because of this smog.”

So instead, Sseg and Jack made a video. And that video’s since racked up a good couple of million plays, somehow epitomising everything that’s exciting about Clean Bandit. It’s refreshing, it’s fun, but it’s not entirely clean-cut. It’s cheeky, fierce, not afraid to take risks. It’s everything the charts require.



If the ‘Mozart’s House’ video was a smog-induced whim, the more recent creations have been a little more carefully-planned. “You shouldn’t make a song and make a video for it,” he says. “We’d like to see it as a single thing that you create together. We’ll have ideas where existing video will influence the music”, like in ‘UK Shanty’, he cites, where “this abstract 3D world became part of the visual concept.”

Jack jumps at the idea of seeing these videos on MTV. “I used to be totally obsessed with MTV 2 and VH1 Classics and Kerrang! and Q. When I was a bit of a goth back in the day… I used to think it was the most incredible thing.” But while all this rapid, due-time ascendency is surrounding the band, the brains behind the project claim to not know a damned thing. “I’m pretty clueless about what it all means when it comes to charts and the music industry”, he says, pausing to reflect on what he’s just said. He doesn’t cite YouTube or Facebook once. Maybe he isn’t fibbing.

But if three years working day-in day-out on the same project hasn’t lent Jack industry knowhow, he and the rest of his band are fast-becoming surrounded by the rewards they warrant. There’s still the small matter of a debut album - “it sounds so simple but it’s so hard to actually make one” - a half a dozen festival slots and goodness knows how many more videos. But Clean Bandit are on their way to being an everyday staple; a representation of the excitement and talent that’s moulding itself a space in the charts and beyond.



Taken from the June 2013 issue of DIY, available now. For more details click here.