Review Summary: Dancing to violins
Assigning 'Clean Bandit' to a specific genre isn't particularly a simple task to fulfil. This London based four piece mixes elements of deep house, pop and classical to form their electronic sound, which ends up being quite refreshing as a result. The bands debut single 'Mozart's House' sounded like a synthpop song hailing from the Top 10 UK charts of 2002, only with samples of Mozart's (big surprise!) Quartet No. 21. It acted almost as an effort to bring Classical music into the current mainstream targeted at popular radio consumers, to which it arguably faltered at. Whilst the idea is nice, the actual execution is boring, monotonous and really lacks any replay value with no real hook to captivate and maintain an audience of any calibre.
But then they released 'Dust Clears'.
Sonically, this is a different world apart from Mozart's House. The song starts off with a minimal beat until vocals that are heavily manipulated with auto tune. On paper, this seems like an odd idea that would sound horrendous, but the actual result is very fitting with the reverb from the vocals cutting through the spacious beat in the background to add atmosphere. The chorus soon kicks to life with a female vocalist singing over twinkling off beat electronics before it's all taken away for what you could essentially call a breakdown. However, unlike a traditional electronic breakdown, strings play the dominant role with a mesmerising bass line that layers underneath the strings. It creates a easy going melody, mixed in with some very lush and beautiful strings to really give it a more relaxing edge.
Other tracks here involve three remixes of 'Dust Clears' and the infectiously catchy 'Rihanna'. Whilst two of the remixes are not even worth mentioning in this review, the 'Thom alt-j remix' is a decent take on the song. Unsurprisingly, it sounds like a stripped down sample based Alt-J song with almost no similarity to the original. It's a vibrant mix of different sounds but one can't help but think that this would probably only ever be a B-side by Alt-J's standards.
Clean Bandit were never going to change the type of music that is circulated within the Top 40. That was never their plan. Instead, they show their prowess by making an innovative, accessible pop song that hugely differs from that it's competing with. The result is incredibly pleasing and indicates huge amounts of promising potential. Potential that is exemplified perfectly in two original songs on this EP.
