★★★★★
"So you think electro music is boring, it's stupid, it's repetitive? Well, it is repetitive." These are the opening lines on Clean Bandit's debut album New Eyes. The track, 'Mozart's House', has been around for a while, but sticking it up at the front of the record places it as an opening gambit. They're throwing down the gauntlet to themselves, with the giddy enthusiasm of the maverick with the synth at end-of-year revue at the music academy, enlisting his virtuoso violinist mates to really...
- thequietus.com
2014-06-14
★★★★★
Clean Bandit, friends of Disclosure and Rudimental, couldn't be more 2014 - four Cambridge graduates (two of whom met in a string quartet) operating out of a council-funded studio in Kilburn, they found some of these guest singers on a kind of music tech apprentice scheme. But if that all sounds a bit "austerity", they're marked out by their old-fashioned sense of 1980s pop entitlement - as seen in those lavish, pan-global videos (drum kits under waterfalls; Lily Cole as a mermaid) - and by...
- www.theguardian.com
2014-06-01
★★★★★
Clean Bandit ... stringing everyone along As befits a band currently riding high - their single Rather Be is the fastest-selling of the year so far - the debut album by Clean Bandit opens bullishly. The first thing you hear is a cocksure defence of dance music against those who would decry it as lightweight or meaningless: the same people, presumably, that Rolling Stone magazine was targeting when it released that online advert claiming that house, techno et al were but a passing...
- www.theguardian.com
2014-05-30
★★★★★
"So you think electronic music is repetitive? Well... it is repetitive," opens the unconvincing intro monologue of Clean Bandit's debut album. It's a disclaimer that carries enough insecurity to suggest the band isn't expecting electronic heads to buy this record, and it's a safe bet. If the album had a concept (which it doesn't) it would probably be "round the houses", as each track tries its damnedest to latch onto any dance genre of the last decade...
- www.clashmusic.com
2014-05-19
★★★★★
Hot on the heels of the string laden, uplifting soul of 'Rather Be' and the equally catchy 'Extraordinary', UK pop-house quartet Clean Bandit have somehow managed to produce a debut album of radio friendly, summertime synth infused pop that fails to live up to their early promise. "So you think electronic music is boring, you think it's stupid, it's repetitive, it tells us over a repetitive electronic beat", a robotic voice flatly lectures us at the beginning of 'Mozart's House'...
- www.state.ie
2014-07-01
★★★★★
'Come Over (ft. Stylo G)'. That's the moment. The moment it becomes all too clear that someone on a lofty office floor, with cartoon-like dollar signs in their carnivorous eyes, has meddled with Clean Bandit's eagerly-awaited debut album. It's a post-Sean Paul monstrosity; a slickly-produced tub-thumper that sounds like it's been scraped up off the bottom of a Malia swimming pool...
- diymag.com
2014-06-17
★★★★★
Head here to submit your own review of this album.
In retrospect, the subtle marketing campaign of Clean Bandit's New Eyes was brilliant. By announcing themselves as a "classical-electronic" hybrid group, they attracted music snobs all over the web ready to tear into how stupid such a hybrid would be, all of whom would listen to the first three or four songs before going off on their Tumblrs about how the band represented the death of music...
- www.thefourohfive.com
2014-06-17
★★★★★
Clever classical aficionados overdo the smug strings on their debut
5 / 10
Clean Bandit's 'Rather Be' - which delivered a fusion of house and classical music when it was released back in January - was a Number One single. It worked because it sounded heartfelt, rather than contrived. Sadly, that can't be said for the rest of the Cambridge band's debut album 'New Eyes'...
- www.nme.com
2014-06-17
★★★★★
Alongside the au courant balladeer Sam Smith, Clean Bandit are forcing the spotlight to shift north of LDN, towards the blue fens of Cambridgeshire. Between them, they're currently dominating the UK chart, and the latter is set to hog even more of the glow in the wake of their eagerly-anticipated debut LP, entitled New Eyes...
- www.musicomh.com
2014-06-17
Loading...
