Big beat
Big beat is an electronic music genre that usually uses heavy breakbeats and synthesizer-generated loops and patterns – common to acid house/techno. The term has been used by the British music industry to describe music by artists such as The Prodigy, the Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, the Crystal Method, Propellerheads, Basement Jaxx and Groove Armada.[1]
For other uses, see Beat music and Big beat (disambiguation).Big beat
Big beat achieved mainstream success during the 1990s, and achieved its critical and commercial peak between 1995 and 1999, with releases such the Chemical Brothers’ Dig Your Own Hole, The Prodigy's The Fat of the Land, and Fatboy Slim's You've Come a Long Way, Baby, before quickly declining from 2001 onwards.[2]
Style[edit]
Big beat features heavy and distorted drum beats at tempos between 100 and 140 beats per minute, Roland TB-303 synthesizer lines resembling those of acid house, and heavy loops from 1960s and 1970s funk, soul, jazz, and rock songs. They are often punctuated with punk-style vocals or rappers and driven by intense, distorted synthesizer basslines with conventional pop, house and techno song structures. Big beat tracks have a sound that includes crescendos, builds, drops, extended drum rolls, and sounds such as spoken word samples, dialogues from film and TV, additional instruments such as Middle Eastern strings or sitars, explosions, air horns, sirens (usually police sirens) and gunshots. As with several other dance genres at the time, the use of effects such as filters, phasing, and flanging was common in the genre.
Celebrated pioneers of the genre such as Fatboy Slim tend to feature heavily compressed loud breakbeats in their songs, which are used to define the music as much as any melodic hooks and sampled sounds. Based on the primary use of loud, heavy breakbeats and basslines, big beat shares attributes with jungle and drum and bass, but has a significantly slower tempo.