The Student Playlist

Showcasing the Best New Music, Curating the Classics

Tag Ed Biggs

REVIEW: Rudimental – ‘We The Generation’ (Asylum / Atlantic / Black Butter)

by Ed Biggs With their unthreatening, chart-bothering mixture of drum’n’bass with elements of other disparate urban genres, Rudimental enjoyed a meteoric ascent to the top of the UK charts back in 2013. Though they released some unquestionably catchy singles – ‘Waiting All Night’ and ‘Not Giving In’ were totally ubiquitous – their debut album Home took an unimaginative, mass-produced cookie-cutter approach to their mixture of genres, resulting in a grindingly average

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REVIEW: Shopping – ‘Why Choose’ (Fatcat)

by Ed Biggs East London three-piece Shopping, consisting of singer Rachel Aggs, Billy Easter and Andrew Milk, have that most elusive and vanishingly rare quality in modern music: that immediately detectable sense of ‘band as gang’. Their funky, punky 2013 debut Consumer Complaints was entirely self-released, and its small-scale, localised success has earned them a promotion to Fatcat Records, an indie with a more nationwide clout.

REVIEW: Mercury Rev – ‘The Light In You’ (Bella Union)

by Ed Biggs For indie fans of a certain age, the mention of Mercury Rev will get them misty-eyed through reminiscing. Sharing an experimental, dreamy pop aesthetic with the likes of The Flaming Lips but unfairly overlooked as a kind of junior partner, their 1998 masterpiece Deserter’s Songs rightly swept the end-of-year critics lists, and its underrated follow-up All Is Dream in 2001 was very nearly as excellent. However, they suffered

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CULT ’90s: The La’s – ‘The La’s’

by Ed Biggs The long rise to fame, the fleeting brilliance, and the mysterious demise of Liverpool’s The La’s remains one of British pop music’s intriguing stories. There can’t be many people in the Western world that aren’t familiar with their signature song ‘There She Goes’, one of the purest pop records to ever fit into the indie genre, but their one and only album is not as appreciated or widely

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REVIEW: Disclosure – ‘Caracal’ (Island / Universal)

by Ed Biggs From the quirkiest corners of the blogosphere to the listening habits of teens and clubbers throughout the nation, it quickly became a cast-iron given that Settle, Guy and Howard Lawrence’s 2013 debut album as Disclosure, was a modern classic. Channelling their wide range of influences, ranging from house and techno to dubstep and garage, through a kaleidoscopic template and offering an alternative for electronic music (crucially free of

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REVIEW: Chvrches – ‘Every Open Eye’ (Virgin / Glassnote)

by Ed Biggs Scottish trio Chvrches deservedly spent most of last year on a triumphant tour soaking up the adulation directed at their scintillating 2013 debut album The Bones Of What You Believe. Highly melodic and sharply produced, it was poised perfectly between genres – too pop to be indie, too indie to be pop – but that didn’t stop the band from reaching a wide audience ranging from the blogosphere to

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REVIEW: New Order – ‘Music Complete’ (Mute)

by Ed Biggs Okay, cards on the table time – I absolutely adore New Order. Having been introduced to their legendary former incarnation Joy Division as a moody, sniffy teenager, I discovered the music they made during their second life at around the same time as under-age drinking and clubbing. Suffice to say, with the help of their seminal compilation Substance, New Order changed my life and broadened my horizons. But

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REVIEW: Angel Haze – ‘Back To The Woods’ (mixtape)

by Ed Biggs Having unexpectedly mis-stepped with 2013’s major label debut Dirty Gold, Angel Haze has decided to go back to the format of the mixtape for their next statement. Real name Raee’n Roes Wilson, Haze came out as agender earlier this year and prefers to be referred to by the singular, gender-neutral pronouns ‘they’ and ‘them’, which this review will respect.

REVIEW: Lana Del Rey – ‘Honeymoon’ (Polydor)

by Ed Biggs Faded Hollywood glamour, tales of doomed runaways, naivety and shattered dreams… pretty much everything you need to know about Lana Del Rey’s third album Honeymoon is communicated to you by its bleached-out, garish cover art. It comes barely a year after her quite wonderful second effort Ultraviolence, which smoothed over the shortcomings of her 2012 debut Born To Die. Where her first made her seem like a dilettante,

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REVIEW: Battles – ‘La Di Da Di’ (Warp)

by Ed Biggs Four years ago, New York’s Battles dealt with the departure of their former lead singer Tyondai Braxton by hiring a number of guest vocalists for their thrilling second album Gloss Drop, giving it the feeling of a compilation or mixtape rather than a studio album. It soft, pliable sound, missing the sharp, angular edges of the group’s 2007 debut Mirrored, but was terrific, bizarre fun nonetheless. For their

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