NEW Forest indie band The Magic Gang are “over the moon” after their debut album charted at No 12 in the Official UK album chart- and went straight to No1 in the UK vinyl chart!

This comes after new single Getting Along was premiered as Annie Mac’s Hottest Record and the band were nominated for Best New Artist at the NME Awards.

Their chart position is just below Sam Smith at No 11 and Ed Sheeran at No 10 but is higher than Alexandra Burke whose new album entered at No16.

It is a major break through for the band with the album chart dominated by long established artists such as Ed Sheeran.

Paeris Giles (drums), Jack Kaye (guitar/vocals), Kris Smith (vocals/guitar) and Angus Taylor (bass) - who together wrote every track, are currently on a UK tour but took to Facebook saying: “We’re over the moon to say that our album charted at #12 in the UK album charts!! We’re also #1 in the UK vinyl chart, it’s so amazing to have fans who buy music physically. Thank you all who bought the album, you’re all the best. Lots of love, the boys x.”

The band have been receiving editorial coverage and glowing reviews in everything from the music press to The Times. With their youthful exuberance and catalogue of life-affirming pop anthems they are very much at the forefront of 2018’s breaking guitar bands.

The album presents a 12-track snapshot of everything that The Magic Gang are about. The buoyant bangers that have been mainstays of their raucous live shows are represented by the likes of Jasmine, All This Way and All That I Want Is You. The latter song was inspired by tales from Brian Wilson’s controversial autobiography ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’, especially in regards to his reclusive years following the peak of The Beach Boys’ success.

The album also includes the recent singles Alright, Your Love and How Can I Compete alongside moodier, piano-orientated, harmony-rich material such as Take Care and bittersweet, singer-songwriter vibes on I’ll Show You.

Talking to the Daily Echo mid-week when the album was hovering at No 10 drummer Paeris, 23, was not getting carried away by it all, telling me: “Potentially we could end up Top 10 which would be nice but we’d be happy to get Top 20 - we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. It was cool when the album came out but we have a load of other things to do; it’s good we are busy but we really haven’t had time to think about it which is probably really good. Our tour starts on Thursday (today) in Birmingham and then we’ve festivals .

“We’ve been working towards this album for four years but it’s not a case of make or break. The album dynamic works a bit different to the singles artist; it’s a solid body of work you are judged on. Since we’ve been with Warner they say we are career artists and there’s not that much pressure to do well with this album, but it just feels it’s long over-due for our fans.

“We try and stay real. We take our music seriously but we have a sense of humour; we are aware of our flaws and what we are. For a guitar band like ours to be top 20 is pretty amazing - to be Top 10 is very rare.

“One of the reasons we held back on the album was to build a dedicated fan base- we just wanted to be wanted!”

It’s really weird as the band started out by accident. The four of us were in the house and we just did this song and then for a laugh created a Facebook page and for some reason it got lots of interest and lots of managers contacted us. Our current manager came to our very first gig! “