Big beat
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| Big Beat | |
| Stylistic origins | |
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| Cultural origins | |
| Typical instruments | |
| Mainstream popularity | Late 1990s |
| Other topics | |
| Breakbeat - Electronic music | |
Big beat is a term employed since the mid 1990s by the British music press to describe much of the music by artists such as The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, The Crystal Method, Propellerheads and The Prodigy, typically driven by heavy breakbeats and synthesizer-generated loops and patterns in common with established forms of electronic dance music such as Techno and Acid House.
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[edit] Style
Big Beat tends to feature distorted, compressed breakbeats at moderate tempos (usually between 90 to 140 beats per minute), acid house style synthesizer lines and heavy loops from 60s and 70s Funk, Jazz, rock and pop songs. They are often punctuated with punkish vocals and driven by intense, distorted basslines with conventional pop and techno song structures. Big beat tracks have a sound that include: crescendos, builds, drops, explosions, crowd-inciting drum rolls, and whooshing sounds that pan across the stereo-field.
Big Beat is also characterized by a strong psychedelic influence stemming from the influence of Dougie Wright, the arrangements and songs by French pop composers such as Serge Gainsbourg and Jean-Jacques Perrey, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and the acid house musical movement of the late 1980s. Celebrated instigators of the genre's sound Fatboy Slim tend to feature heavily compressed thunderous drum sound (hence the name) in their tracks, along with a range of sampled sounds such as explosions, police sirens, and snippets of Turntablism. Big Beat shares attributes with Jungle and Drum & Bass, based on the use of frantic, heavy breakbeats and basslines but has a much slower rhythm.
[edit] History
At the beginning of the 1990s, several local UK electronic music genres converged at several points. Against the backdrop of several popular musical subcultures including the rave scene, UK rap, "chill out" or ambient music and gestating subgenres such as "Trip-Hop" and Breaks - plus the emerging Britpop movement, a process of hybridisation and a taste for eclecticism was developing within British dance music generally. Early purveyors of this approach include influential artists such as The Orb, Depth Charge, Transglobal Underground and Andy Weatherall's Sabres Of Paradise. Sampling had become an integral part of dance music production and made the fusion of many genres easier. Record labels such as Junior Boy's Own and Heavenly Records demonstrated this open-minded approach releasing slower breakbeat-based music alongside House and Techno singles, introducing dynamic new artists such as The Chemical Brothers (then known as The Dust Brothers) and Monkey Mafia in 1994. Norman Cook and Damien Harris first became associated with the term Big Beat through Harris' label Skint Records and club night 'The Big Beat Boutique', held on Fridays at Brighton's now demolished Concorde club between 1995 and 2001. The music played there ranged from breakbeats, rock, funk, drum'n'bass, industrial, jazz, acid house, hip hop and trance. The Heavenly label's London club The Sunday Social had adopted a similar philosopy with resident DJs the Chemical Brothers and their similarly eclectic approach. The term caught on, and was subsequently applied to a wide variety of acts, notably Bentley Rhythm Ace, Lionrock, Monkey Mafia, Meat Beat Manifesto, Lunatic Calm, Death in Vegas and the Propellerheads.
Big Beat was later brought into the American mainstream because of the "rock-like" qualities found in the music of acts such as The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy. By mixing their electronic elements with the characteristics of post-grunge, The Prodigy was able to popularize the Big Beat genre even more. "Firestarter" was The Prodigy's first big national and international hit. Because of their cross-genre sound, the band was booked to play rock festivals causing rock fans to appreciate their electronic style and opening a gateway for other Big Beat musicians. The band released their third album, The Fat of the Land, in 1997 and it topped both the UK and US charts along with the charts of twenty or so other countries.
Other notable Big Beat acts include The Crystal Method, Overseer, Adam Freeland, David Holmes, and the Lo-Fidelity All Stars. The Big Beat scene started to decline in popularity by 1999, due to the novelty of the genre's formulae dwindling and a subsequent media backlash[citation needed]. Artists started to diversify their sound with other genres such as Trance (Chemical Brothers), Soul and Gospel (Fatboy Slim). However, Big Beat had left an indelible mark on popular music as an indigenous progression from rave music, bridging a divide between clubbers and indie-rock fans. Without this connection some have argued that it never would have reached the heights that it did, or talked to as many listeners as it did. [1] The genre's mainstream popularity was to be taken by funky house, then later electro house in the mid-2000s.
Big Beat acts such as The Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim have collaborated on a variety of musical styles from rave, house, rap, disco, etc. In "Generation Ectasy", Reynolds says, "they've reminded us that dance music is supposed to be about fun, about freaky dancing as opposed to head nodding and train spotting."[1]
[edit] Notable big beat artists
[edit] Hip-Hop and Big Beat
[edit] References
- ^ Reynolds, Simon (1998). Generation Ecstasy. Little, Brown and Company. pp. 453 pages. see p. 384
[edit] External links
- The DJ List's Big Beat artists
- Discussions, music and news from Sirius radio station for big beats, Boombox
- Onlineradio, Discussions and News about Bigbeat
- Damien Harris on the Big Beat legacy
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