Clean Bandit, a young British quartet mixing classical music with electronic beats, have taken the top spot in the UK singles chart.
The group's Rather Be sold 163,000 copies during its first week of release, making it the fastest selling single to be released in January since Babylon Zoo’s Spaceman back in 1996.
Babylon Zoo sold 383,000 copies of their single to take the top spot.
Clean Bandit, which consists of Jack and Luke Patterson, Grace Chatto and Neil Amin-Smith, got together back in 2009 while some members of the band were studying together in Cambridge.
Grace Chatto from the band said: ‘We came together at university when Jack got quite involved in the classical music that Neil and I were performing. He started writing beats and basslines alongside snippets of classical recordings he’d made of our quartet.
‘We really wanted to play live together, so we booked a club night. It was only about two weeks away from when we had the initial idea, so we spent those two weeks madly putting together about 10 songs. We then performed live and knew that we wanted to do it again and again.’
January has been an unexpectedly big month for singles sales with each release shifting more than 106,000 copies.
In the album charts, Ellie Goulding returned to the number one spot with her second LP Halycon.
The British singer songwriter has been nominated for three BRIT awards at the forthcoming event in February.
The group's Rather Be sold 163,000 copies during its first week of release, making it the fastest selling single to be released in January since Babylon Zoo’s Spaceman back in 1996.
Babylon Zoo sold 383,000 copies of their single to take the top spot.
Clean Bandit, which consists of Jack and Luke Patterson, Grace Chatto and Neil Amin-Smith, got together back in 2009 while some members of the band were studying together in Cambridge.
Grace Chatto from the band said: ‘We came together at university when Jack got quite involved in the classical music that Neil and I were performing. He started writing beats and basslines alongside snippets of classical recordings he’d made of our quartet.
‘We really wanted to play live together, so we booked a club night. It was only about two weeks away from when we had the initial idea, so we spent those two weeks madly putting together about 10 songs. We then performed live and knew that we wanted to do it again and again.’
January has been an unexpectedly big month for singles sales with each release shifting more than 106,000 copies.
In the album charts, Ellie Goulding returned to the number one spot with her second LP Halycon.
The British singer songwriter has been nominated for three BRIT awards at the forthcoming event in February.
