The band formed in 2008 after architecture student Jack started adding beats to some of the classical string quartet pieces Grace, his then girlfriend, had performed with her old school friend Neil Amin-Smith as part of the Chatto Quartet. “I still feel like most people don’t know much about us,” shrugs Luke. But Clean Bandit remain ultimately reliant on the mercurial pizzazz of proper pop stars front of house, so what are people’s perceptions of them as a band? “They don’t have any perceptions,” says Grace. The group have spearheaded a new kind of Avengers-style pop, with multiple star turns helping lesser-known artists such as Benny Blanco, Jonas Blue and Tiësto to the upper reaches of the charts. Rockabye features on their restlessly inventive second album What Is Love?, which, as well as containing two more chart-toppers (string-drenched weepie Symphony, featuring Zara Larsson, and the juddery electro of Solo alongside Demi Lovato), also comes with a genre-agnostic, Spotify-friendly gaggle of collaborators, from Ellie Goulding to Stefflon Don, via Craig David, Rita Ora and Outkast’s Big Boi. It spent nine weeks at No 1 in the UK and took the Christmas top spot. It was followed by four more Top 10 singles and then, in 2016, by Rockabye’s ludicrous conjoining of dancehall, a near 400-year-old nursery rhyme and Sean Paul rapping about single mums. Their 2014 Jess Glynne-assisted, Grammy-winning Rather Be alchemised the band’s fusion of classical and handbag house into a million-selling single, spending four weeks at No 1 and gatecrashing the US Top 10. It is a telling anecdote from a band who have maintained near anonymity (Jack says he often gets mistaken for the tennis player Andy Murray) in the face of huge success. “Then she sent a photo that was meant to be proof of something,” laughs his brother Luke, the group’s drummer. “This one fan wrote to all my friends saying she had a dark secret about me,” he says, pushing the dregs of a caesar salad around his plate. In accordance with modern pop rules, these fans have given themselves a collective noun – “fandits” – and while Grace is adamant that they’re “really nice” and “don’t battle with other fandoms”, Patterson is reminded of a more sinister experience. With a frankly ludicrous 4bn global streams making them one of the UK’s most successful bands, their difficulty in finding a neat catch-all is pretty understandable.
“It doesn’t feel like it’s any particular type of person – it’s just a big group of, er, random people,” laughs producer Jack Patterson. “Age-wise, it’s very broad,” says cellist, producer, and de facto front-person Grace Chatto.
S equestered in the corner of an east London restaurant, Clean Bandit are having a hard time describing their fans.