StʌrunneR
New Eyes (Special Edition) 2014
What Is Love (Deluxe Edition) 2018
穿越电音的清冷和舞曲的摇曳，以更严肃的歌词探讨分离。
Trained as classical musicians, British trio Clean Bandit aren’t afraid to experiment. Their 2014 debut, New Eyes, introduced a flair for genre-bending as they punctuated Mozart with surprising electronic beats and fused guest Jess Glynne’s powerhouse voice to a soaring orchestra. On their second album, What Is Love?, Grace Chatto and brothers Jack and Luke Patterson beef up the guest list to 22 collaborators, including Rita Ora, Big Boi and Luis Fonsi. Luke Patterson tells Apple Music about four great things you’ll find on _What Is Love?_—and one you won’t.
Answers! “Listeners should try and answer the question What Is Love? through each of the songs. Whenever we’re working with artists, they tend to bring their own lyrics. Each song explores this topic of love in a completely different way. You’ve got ‘Rockabye’ talking about love between a mother and child. Then ‘We Were Just Kids’ is about love between siblings, and then there’s songs about the absence of love. Listeners should be thinking about what love is and what it means to them. Hopefully this record inspires that.”
Guitars! “We’ve strayed away from our classical roots. We’re still using strings here and there, but a lot of the songs now feature acoustic guitar. Some of it is actually a friend of ours called Nakajin, from Japanese band Sekai no Owari. Now we’re about to re-create all these songs for the live show, and Jack’s just like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to learn guitar.’”
The ’90s! “A lot of the music is reminiscent of ’90s pop music—it features so many artists, but at the same time there’s a Clean Bandit sound. On ‘Playboy Style,’ there’s something about Charli XCX’s tone. She is very much inspired by music of that era and that comes through in the way that she writes, and then we were adding this reggae feel. And it’s got to feel somewhat ’90s if you’ve got the king of garage [Craig David] on the record.”
Slower tempos! “We’ve slowed things down a bit since New Eyes. A lot of that stuff was quite experimental. It was trap-, drum ’n’ bass- and house-inspired beats. Since then, we’ve brought things down to 100 BPM, which is a more reggaetón feel. That tempo benefits so much from having these tropical sounds. Jack’s been experimenting a lot with different percussive synth sounds and Latin vibes, which always adds a bounciness to our tracks.”
Not Elton John! “We’ve got a couple of songs with him. [But] overall, it felt like they just didn’t fit in with the rest of the way the songs were sounding together. It would be doing the song an injustice if we were to just slide it in, and then people might get to that track and think, ‘Oh, this sounds weird within the context of the album.’ But it’s definitely a song that we’re desperately trying to put out there.”
古典乐与舞曲的跨界当然不是什么新鲜事，早在上世纪 70 年代，加入经典交响乐的迪斯科就已经蔚然成风。在 2014 年的首张专辑里，Clean Bandit 将一段莫扎特的旋律化作一首 Deep House 单曲，听来的效果竟不是新奇，而是意外地和谐。原因之一是这支伦敦组合的两位创始成员：大提琴手 Grace Chatto 和小提琴手 Neil Amin-Smith，大学时期本就是弦乐四重奏的成员。一次，Chatto 的男友 Jack Patterson 录下了他们的一场表演，接着开始剪切采样，再配上 beats。抓住这天降的灵感，他们一鼓作气，在两周内写了 10 首歌，随后迎来了 Clean Bandit 的第一次现场演出。
Clean Bandit 从建队之初就确立了音乐风格：以古典音乐精准的比例调配为支撑，将舞曲与流行乐生动融合，以指挥家一般的敏锐直觉在合适的时间匹配合适的歌手。2014 年，乐队凭借火爆全球的《Rather Be》一举成名，而这支单曲中那位“合适的歌手”就是 Jess Glynne。彼时的 Jess 虽然默默无闻，但她的演唱情绪饱满又不矫揉造作，与《Rather Be》的键盘 riff 搭配起来，浑然天成。从那时起，与 Clean Bandit（Amin-Smith 2016 年离队）合作的歌手名单越来越长，Charli XCX、Rita Ora、Demi Lovato 等人都在其中。不止如此，乐队还巧妙地调整风格，以配合各位演唱者的音色：他们为 Sean Paul 配上热情的雷鬼碎拍，为英伦车库巨星 Craig David 配上跳跃的切分节奏。这些年来，Clean Bandit 大幅调整了古典乐加 House 节拍的动机，在更慢、更具热带风情的律动基础上，加入原声吉他演奏，但他们音乐的精神始终未变，那就是用令人难忘的形式诠释复杂的情感。
Classical crossover in dance music is hardly new; in the ’70s, disco remixes of orchestral staples were all the rage. But when Clean Bandit turned Mozart’s melodies into deep house on their 2014 debut, they somehow made it seem natural, rather than like a novelty. But then, two founding members of the London group are themselves classical musicians: Cellist Grace Chatto and violinist Neil Amin-Smith played together in a college string quartet when Chatto’s boyfriend, Jack Patterson, recorded a performance and began chopping it up over beats. Somewhere in between that “eureka” moment and writing 10 songs in the two weeks before their first gig, Clean Bandit (rounded out by Patterson and his brother Luke, a drummer) forged their sound: a lively, springy fusion of pop and dance, buoyed by classical music’s sense of scale and a conductor’s intuition for featuring the right soloist at the right time. In the case of their stratospheric 2014 breakout hit, “Rather Be,” that soloist was Jess Glynne, an all-but-unknown singer whose soulful but unpretentious tone control made her the perfect fit for the song’s memorable keyboard riff. Since then, Clean Bandit (sans Amin-Smith since 2016) have turned to an ever-expanding roster of guest vocalists—Charli XCX, Rita Ora, Demi Lovato—while cleverly tweaking their style to suit each voice: sparkling reggae backbeats for Sean Paul, skippy syncopations for UK garage icon Craig David. Over the years, Clean Bandit have largely traded classical motifs and house beats for acoustic guitars and slower, more tropical grooves, but the spirit of their music remains the same, distilling complex emotions into an unforgettable form.
FROM
Cambridge, England
FORMED
2008
GENRE
Dance
2009 年，Clean Bandit 由几位剑桥大学的学生创立。Grace Chatto 与 Neil Amin-Smith 从小接受正规的古典音乐教育，而 Jack Patterson 与 Luke Patterson 则是 House 音乐的死忠。从 Clean Bandit 于 2010 年发行的一支单曲《Mozart’s House》的名字中，就能读出他们的音乐理念：把古典乐与浩室音乐杂糅起来。2014 年，他们再接再厉，与英国女歌手 Jess Glynne 合作推出了单曲《Rather Be》。Jess Glynne 能量感十足的女声，在小提琴、钢琴与电子音效的掩映下，焕发出崭新的活力。Clean Bandit 的功力在于：他们的杂糅丝毫不显突兀，古典乐与浩室音乐两个部分的衔接流畅，且各自运转自如。
The UK group Clean Bandit often begin their songs with a flourish of violin—a nod to their roots playing together in string quartets in college. Their debut single set Mozart’s melodies to crisp dance beats, but their taste for fusion goes even further, encompassing deep house, lilting R&B, dancehall, and adventurous electronic details that are offset by the seductive smoothness of their melodies. Like their Black Butter labelmates Rudimental, Clean Bandit represent the modern sound of the UK: diverse, subtly experimental, and committed to pop music as a joyfully unifying force.
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