๐ Big Beatยถ
โWhile Chemical Breaks was mostly an American thing, Big Beat was mostly a UK thing.
โBig Beat is the most commercial genre of Breaks but not necessarily the worst (that would be Nu Skool). Legend purports that it got its name from the club Big Beat Boutique, where a then unknown DJ called Fatboy Slim would cane these kinds of tracks. That might be apocryphal (the Fatboy Slim inventing Big Beat thing, not the Fatboy Slim residency at Big Beat Boutique thing), but I donโt have any issues in claiming that Fatboy Slim is largely responsible for Big Beat. Itโs all his fault. I donโt hold that against him.โ
The trend became really well known between 1995 and 1998.
โHip hop - flavored for middle-class college studentsโ - said one of the critics of English DJ magazines.โ
Breakbeat made the biggest impact on the genre, but there are plenty of jungle or techno elements, as well as the features of trip hop.
Itโs worth knowing about the trend that it spins above 115 - 120 bpm, saturated with live (or live like) instruments, in many cases filled with typically pop elements, as well as bases borrowed from hip hop (even scratching).
โBig Beat still adhered to the Funky Drummer cadence of its progenitors although by the late 90s Clyde Stubblefieldโs infamous drum break was rarely sampled and producers would just re-create it on their own gear with heavy compression, distortion, EQ and filtering. But Big Beatโs signature sound came from the big booming bass kick on the one of every bar โ heavier, thicker, and more prominent than the rest of the percussion.โ
โBig Beat may still be around, but it definitely overdosed on itself after 2000. The remnants of Big Beat went on to something even more unforgivable.โ
You can find more details about its formation and development on Ishkurโs Guide to Electronic Music, and you can listen to big beat tracks right away. http://music.ishkur.com/?query=BigBeat
The Every Noise at Once platform provides an opportunity for people to get to know better the names of the creators who have ever been in the genre and thus the peculiarities of it. https://everynoise.com/everynoise1d.cgi?root=big beat&scope=all
Sources :
MENNYEK KAPUI - Az elektroniks zene รฉvtizede (The decade of electronic music)
Ishkurโs Guide to Electronic Music
Every Noise at Once