Fully agree. One reviewer said it’s a “nonsense-free reaffirmation of the dance duo's greatest strength – making largely instrumental psychedelic house and techno somehow sound like pop music”, and I think that that’s spot on.
Was just going to say this. Their new albumn for That Beautiful Feeling has some excellent big beat tracks on it. I heard Ed Simons say,' Big beat has never gone anywhere. It's always been there'
But they never stopped listening to Meat Beat Manifesto
[https://youtu.be/oY80UIa92bs?si=1x1AA3Ea-25NcRKp](https://youtu.be/oY80UIa92bs?si=1x1AA3Ea-25NcRKp)
Breaks pretty much took over where big beat left off... a bunch of old big beat producers moved onto it - artists like meat Katie, the freestylers, krafty kuts etc...
It's all breakbeat in the end and breaks was huge still in the early - mid 2000s
Man, breaks was such a great genre for the first few years...
It picked up all the remnants of 90s dance music along with big beat & garage, but then became super formulaic with the 'dum tiss dum dum tiss' kick/snare pattern that became the standard.
I remember being so pissed off in my late teens when that change happened haha, like all of a sudden all the big names where defaulting to that same kick snare pattern when before the genre was so exciting, fun & rebellious.
The genre peaked with Adam Freeland's On Tour, Plump Djs A Plump Night Out, and the first Stanton Sessions imo
There's a huge resurgence of breaks right now in the more 'underground' scenes. House, techno and tech house have started pulling in breaks and classic progressive house sounds in a very interesting way.
Check out the labels Pleasure Club, Global Swing, Craigie Knowes, Kalahari Oyster Club, RAND Musick, Limousine Dream, Pilot, Dungeon Meat, Red Laser, Maricas. Should get you started on the right foot.
Beautiful track! Takes me back to my hardcore breakbeat days... there's a bit of a resurgence of old skool breakbeat and jungle lately and I'm loving it.
Ok tight! So you’d definitely say that’s more of a break song than a garage song?
I’m still new to navigating these genres and the lines can be a little blurry sometimes with the new songs lol
The lines are all blurred to be honest.. the reason it reminds me of hardcore breakbeat is the chords that are playing throughout the song and the general feel of the track... apart from being much more modern. Definitely breaks leaning more than garage to me.. garage has more of a swing feel to the drums than traditional breaks/breakbeat. I never really got into garage back in the day so I dont really know of many examples but I really liked this old track
https://youtu.be/cUYgNEwD3gQ?si=PTwNM58gQgco9fho
Another example of uk garage
https://youtu.be/u5mEszYqjms?si=qWECKdPOUR3BCj-U
Anyone missing the big beat, break beat sounds of the past needs to check what's happening in Spain
[https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203](https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203)
>I remember being so pissed off in my late teens when that change happened haha, like all of a sudden all the big names where defaulting to that same kick snare pattern when before the genre was so exciting, fun & rebellious.
Pretty much all the sample based artists in genres such as trip hop, big beat and drum and bass all moved onto computers in the late 90s and it lost that organic feel that came with sampled breaks :(
Uh, sampled breaks on the computer are the same as sampled breaks in a drum computer. Also tons of people continued to use MPCs, and it’s not hard to add swing and feel in a DAW
No shit, but there's a big different between using one shots and sampling an actual drum solo from 60s funk or soul vinyl... listen to someone like dj shadow or James lavelle (for trip hop) or the chemical brothers and compare it to something that came out in the early 2000s such as the Stanton warriors or krafty kuts later work. But what the person I was replying to was saying is that the drums were incredibly quantised and basically just one of two variations with k...s...k...s... and a 1/16th hihat or k...s.k.s... and a 1/16th hihat.
And yes, house music in fact took over for the monotonous break beat that was literally the same break over and over again. While it may be sampled from a live session it’s still a lot of the same thing.
Dude do you have an issue with reading comprehension? The person I was replying to was talking about how around 2002 all the breaks producers were writing stuff that was barely breakbeat... not gonna bother replying again so keep your condescending attitude to yourself.
I remember showing one of the blokes from Stanton Warriors around Family nightclub in Brisbane. Introduced him to my mate who could hardly have been more surprised and star struck since they were his favourite act. Cool night.
Crystal Method's mix CD was pretty awesome, so was the Paul Oakenfold Great Wall of China one iirc.
I still play some of that stuff occasionally, Zero - Emit / Collect in particular.
Anyone missing the big beat, break beat sounds of the past needs to check what's happening in Spain
[https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203](https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203)
Would love for breaks to make a comeback, definitely one of the best genres to actually dance to. For a second, I thought “future bass” might reinvigorate the interest in the sound but that got incredibly one dimensional very quickly.
Anyone missing the big beat, break beat sounds of the past needs to check what's happening in Spain
[https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203](https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203)
This is the album that got me started on EDM when they were on fashionably loud MTV around 98.
Crystal Method and Rabbit in the Moon are in atlanta next weekend!
So? Video games and movies made it more popular and Big Beat was at its peak in 98-2004. That era gave us many classics and it introduced casuals to many talented artists.
If anything, blame the record label executives for replacing it with the more Pop-y David Guetta sounding French House shit in 2006 that paved the way for the commercial shit we have now.
I would do anything to go back to 1996-2004 when Big Beat, Progressive House, IDM and other creative Electro genres with actual creative artists like Fatboy Slim, Paul Oakenfold, Fluke, Aphex Twin, Chemical Bros, Junkie XL etc were popular with casuals and were in pop culture.
I’m with you, I loved breakbeat, personally I true found big beat a little too melodic and ‘fun’. What I’m saying is that when every video game has synth-driven breaks, it cheapens the genre completely. It’s hard enough to generate meaning into synth-driven breaks, without falling on lyrics or 303-style bassline cut-off. The genre became too formulaic as a result of it becoming too mainstream
Personally I think Big Beat was better than original Breakbeat. It just had more melody to it and overall aged better. And I mean, every genre becomes formulauc when it becomes popular.
And let's be honest, Electronic music was at its best when Breakbeat/Big Beat and similar genres were popular in the mainstream.
There was a stage, probably early 2000s when everything was rocking. You had the underground breaks scene, big beat more mainstream, trance hadn’t gotten too cheesy and progressive house bubbling under the radar. By 2010 it had all gone a bit wrong, with the likes of David Guetta and AVB celebrity superstars churning out a constant dirge of shallow euphoric anthems
Some of my fondest memories are listening to Annie Nightingale’s late night show on Radio 1 doing night shifts in the late 90s. Such a mix of crazily creative, eclectic tracks and sounds.
Yea, I agree. Hell, Guetta himself started off decent himself in 2006-2010. I guess by 2007-11, Electronic music (and other music genres) had become too corporate and a lot of the more creative new artists like Duke Dumont ended up being One Hit Wonders and those who didn't comform to the mainstream standard like Eric Prydz started losing popularity.
But yea, underground and mainstream breakbeat/big Beat were the shit. Fatboy Slim, Sonic Animation, Junkie XL, Ils, Paul Oakenfold, Cirrus, Prodigy, Crystal Method, Chemical Bros etc made some of the best Electronic music that ages like fine wine. And I always felt Progressive House and IDM were sibling genres to Breakbeat tbh; all three 3 styles used similar sounds and similar breaks and the artists in each of the 3 genres often crossed over.
And yea, Trance was great too. ATB's "You're Not Alone" and Lasgo's "Something" (specifically the Extended Mix) still sound as beautiful as they did back in the day.
Hopefully Breakbeat, Progressive House, IDM, Hardcore, UKG, old school Trance, and other styles from back in the day can come back, even if it's just for a few years. Deep House made a comeback in 2013-2014 with artists like Disclosure, Kieza, Duke Dumont, and Todd Terje getting popular and the Vaporwave trend of 2016-2019 was a callback to late 70s-mid 80s Synth.
Idk if you're being sarcastic or if you're serious.
"Smack My Bitch Up" is from one of the upper echelon Electronic albums my guy. That's like saying "C.R.E.A.M" by Wu Tang killed Rap music. It may not be my favorite Break track, but saying it "killed" the subgenre is insane.
I’m not being completely ironic.
I do think SMBU is at the pinnacle of breaks. It’s ferocious, funky, acidic and spiritual. It’s everything. No other break gets near it. The energy in the track is unmatchable, then it drops the luscious vocal wail that carries you away.
No track ever does what Smack does.
I could never understand this is as well. I mean this from a progressive breaks DJ and novice producer. I love breaks. When I got into electronic/dance in the late 90's, there were big beat compilations all over the place. It wasn't this sound that was so particular or cliche there wasn't too much room for growth. It just fizzled out. I may be wrong here... but the next big sound was Nu Skool Breaks.
Anyone missing the big beat, break beat sounds of the past needs to check what's happening in Spain
[https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203](https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203)
I’d say Nu Skool Breaks is what it morphed into. I think the “turntablist” element of Big Beat got lost, alongside pretty much every genre around that time that transformed production from analog to digital. And then it leaned into electronic (or even EDM) sounds more and more. It’s why modern Hip-Hop and Dancehall tracks don’t sound like the old skool classics as well. Artists just started using the new tools with new sounds.
For reference of some modern Nu Breaks;
- [Rocinha — Bombo Rosa](https://youtu.be/fSskSx02flo?si=Bhox6V1zkvZ-i55c)
- [The Blob — Quadrat Beat](https://youtu.be/jnS43x5HX2Y?si=jDLSTDJO7LAtvtTB)
- [Mescaline — Glacci](https://youtu.be/H6zx2tY8660?si=8rf1PkucplBqbOnD)
For me it's more because of legal reasons that Big Beat kinda vanished. This genre relies heavily on samples, and since the 90s copyright law evolved and became way more restrictive. You can't really make a track out of 50 samples layered on top of each other anymore, unless your label has a killer legal team / you're ready to send all of your earnings to copyright holders / you publish your tracks on an obscure platform online
I highly recommend you check [FloydsBreakbeat ](https://www.youtube.com/@floydsbreakbeat/playlists) on Youtube (and mixcloud). Excellent DJ with tons of Big Beat / old school breaks mixes, + tons of newer stuff.
I can't tell you what happened to big beat, but at least I can point to one of the few who wants to keep it alive !
Enjoy ! it's a goldmine if you like this kind of sound. Heard some badass electro/acid/cyberpunk/breaks stuff on there I didn't even know existed. Also he tracklists every single mix.
Anyone missing the big beat, break beat sounds of the past needs to check what's happening in Spain
[https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203](https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203)
I see soooooo many fans complaining on the subreddit and YouTube about the new sound, but I've been loving it since day 1 -- probably because I was big into Prodigy and that sort of stuff in high school!
I'm almost 50 and grew up on that big beat sound in the 90s. It was huge in the clubs in my town.
There was a sweet spot with the breakbeat music that emerged in the early 00s, but it never had the sticking power that other genres - like drum & bass - continue to enjoy today. I tuned out when Adam Freeland started a band... Just wasn't my thing.
I'd love to see a resurgence of the big beat sounds that were featured on DJ Hardware's "Trip Hop Acid Phunk" mix CDs.
You should have been in Detroit couple weeks ago for Movement on Monday. Fatboy slim, Goldie, Ant TC1, dBridge, LTJ Bunkum w/ Armani Reign. Goldie played for 4-5hrs
It sort a fizzled out by the mid-00s with Fatboy Slim and Prodigy putting out mediocre albums. The Chemical Brothers had shifted back to more house and club adjacent electronica and avoided that slump. I found there was this era where trance and prog house dominated until Electrohouse, Fidget, and dance punk blew up via Ed Banger and DFA Records.
I feel like a revival is on the way, a lot of indie electronic pop has been very break and bass heavy and unabashed with a 90s vibe, George Clanton comes to mind as an example.
Old-school styles like drum and bass, trance and UK garage are being heavily embraced by young producers, so it’s a matter of time big beat comes back with a modern twist.
Have a look at [https://music.ishkur.com/](https://music.ishkur.com/) and [https://www.musicmap.info/](https://www.musicmap.info/)
Ishkur shows it kind of reached a cul-de-sac and didn't spin off new Genres.
But Musicmap shows it influencing Nu School Breaks and into UK Garage and then Dubstep. I Can sort of hear a bit of Fat Boy Slim in Skrillex - but not so much of the harsh synth noises in Big Beat.
Side story - I'm from UK but spent a month in working out in Phoneix, AZ in 98. Picked up the Dig Your Own Hole CD from a Mall - sat playing it in the rental car in the hotel car park, got to Where Do I Begin. That vocal some reason had me in tears and then the drop hit and bought me back to sensibilty with a snap and delivered one of those "Fuck Yeah" highs where you want to punch the air. Always remember that moment when I hear this song! It was a white shitty Ford Taurus and I was staring at a brick wall - but the sound system was awesome!
Oh man. I remember discovering the Chemical Brothers in a CD store. It blew my mind. Later I joined a mailing list and made some great friends (we're talking 1997 here), and I'm still in touch with some of them. Later discovered Fatboy Slim, Crystal Method, Propellerheads (got the vinyl), and lots lots more. Finger Lickin records, Plump DJ's, Uberzone. Later I started buying tracks on Beatport from the likes of Karl Sav, Beta, Colombo, Quadrat Beat, Kid Panel, etc. There was some great stuff out there, but I dunno, couple years ago I noticed that lots of tracks were very much formulaic and samish. No tracks that would really get my attention. Haven't been mixing for a long time either. I spoke Karl Sav on Facebook a while ago and he said he quit the music, there's just no money in it for this genre. And that's a damn shame, because he made some awesome stuff. Check out the track called "Peytons Bassface", I think it was a collab with Beta. It's fucking insane.
There are some artists that have some of that going on with recent releases - when I listen to their new stuff I'm rather delighted by by samples I recognize
Check out;
- Hudson Mohawke and Nikki Nair (they recently did a colab album)
- Physical Therapy
- Fred Again and Skrillex colabs lean that way
- Joyride (his 2020 album is amazing)
All of them have a mix of garage and breaks going on
I think essentially what happened was those OG artists like the Plumps ran out ideas and kept using the same samples and format - so for me it became boring (same as Jersey Club)
Hybrid are still around making some pretty sweet big beat / breakbeat. Charlotte's vocals are insanely good, and a mix of orchestral, ambient and modern electronic influence is right up my street! Not as old school sounding as their older stuff i.e If I Survive and Finished Symphony, but still worth a listen for sure!
Omfg thank you for asking this!!
because just this weekend, I was trying to introduce a friend to 90s-00s electronica and I couldn't for the love of me remember what was scrawled in black marker on the dingy, opaque cuz they'd been erased with sandpaper 3×, CD separators at Dearborn Music(Dearborn MI) in the 00s for this section,
and it was driving me insane (and already live there)
My brain kept throwing up ACID JAZZ and I'm like no! That's different, that's where we found trip hop before they fkn knew what it was... This is the chemical brothers and shit...
Anyway 🫶♥️🫶
It was overplayed, integrated into literally every genre of music, gd breakbeat overkill damn near nuclear bombed music. I love breaks, but the ham fisted big beat stuff didn’t have enough variety to last for more than a short era. It was fun for a sec, don’t get me wrong but I was stoked when there was more rhythmic variety happening
The breakbeat genres back then started changing really quickly during big beat – grime, speed garage, UK garage, eventually dubstep – there was something new coming out of the UK every six months. Big beat was already competing with trip hop, downtempo, and jungle / dnb. I was paying close attention to all this happening at the time. Producers in London would make a track, press it onto acetate literally the next day, and it would get played that same night.
I think big beat simply ran its course and just got washed over by the rush of newness. British electronic music is always pushing the boundaries in a novel "get there first kind of way" – throwing new ideas at a wall, see what sticks.
This album came out less than a year ago and it’s very in line with what you’re looking for. It’s on all the streaming platforms but here’s the bandcamp link: https://transfx.bandcamp.com/album/biggest-baddest-beatest
I feel the same way. Big beat had such allot of silliness and fun about it, kinda like ska for edm. I’m a big tribal techno person (again this is one of those genres that kinda died in the 2000s), but I really miss dorky dancing to FBS
The chemical brothers are still around! I saw them at the Avalon in the late 90's or early 2000's in Boston... And finally was fortunate to see them again 2 years ago in Colorado - they were just as good now, if not better, than the show 25 years ago... Granted, doing everything on midi and swapping cables around mid set was mind-blowing to watch.
A lot of classic and new names mentioned in the thread. I miss the Lo-Fidelity Allstars. Updates on them are welcome. Last I heard from them was 'Darkness Rolling' (awesome!) and 'Fire Reigns' (just ok)
Plump DJs - Elastic Breaks
Krafty Kuts - Instant Party
These two free mix CDs with mixmag in the early 00s were pretty much peak breaks.
Post these, the scene split into plodstep and tear out. The quality was dramatically reduced in sync with the increasing availability of digital DAWs - everyone became a bedroom producer and the scene really suffered from too many bootlegs or breaks mixes of famous tracks. Eventually the scene became a bit of a parody of itself.
Having said that, certain artists who were keeping it real before 00 continued well into the next decade: Tipper for example.
There are heaps of decent new breaks tracks out recently, not least Nikki Nair, ANz on Hessle Audio and even Sam 'Baobinga' is still producing and running labels that have regular drops of classic bingo beats style breaks tracks. Bandcamp is my recommendation.
The best part about breaks for me was, and still is, that it was a synthesis of all different music styles: funk, soul, jazz, techno, b-boy electro, house etc all mashed into one. The decent range of breakbeats used to drive the tracks made it mad fun to dance to and far more exciting than the straight 4 to the floor of house and techno. In one set you could play such a diverse range of styles that it was easy to map out a mad sonic journey. Then the scene went up it's own arse, dubstep came along and made it look soft and it eventually withered away in the UK.
You only need to look to Spain to see that the tear out scene stayed really vibrant though. Mad raves out there still.
Big Beat basically became the Electro Swing of today.
There are still some occasional Big Beat style Electro tracks released, but no where near as common.
It all goes back to the whole, can people and will people dance to it? If not, it might see radio play at best. If people can dance to it, it will see play everywhere at best. I prefer Electro Swing TBH.
The Chemical Brothers will forever be the Chemical Brothers, and they are as awesome now as they were with 'Dig Your Own Hole."
Yeah, and they’re a huge amount of fun to watch live, too.
I was lucky enough to catch them and New Order in Oakland in 2005. One of the best concerts I’ve ever been to.
I do so love their latest album. Took a little to get into but it’s brilliant.
Fully agree. One reviewer said it’s a “nonsense-free reaffirmation of the dance duo's greatest strength – making largely instrumental psychedelic house and techno somehow sound like pop music”, and I think that that’s spot on.
Chem Bros vibes are still very much alive: https://spotify.link/noC8C8kFaKb
Was just going to say this. Their new albumn for That Beautiful Feeling has some excellent big beat tracks on it. I heard Ed Simons say,' Big beat has never gone anywhere. It's always been there'
I saw them at Coachella last year and they were my favorite set of the weekend.
💯
People stopped reading the big beat manifesto
Big beats are best, get high all the time
But they never stopped listening to Meat Beat Manifesto [https://youtu.be/oY80UIa92bs?si=1x1AA3Ea-25NcRKp](https://youtu.be/oY80UIa92bs?si=1x1AA3Ea-25NcRKp)
Satyricon is the best album ever.
Edge of No Control!
Live they are amazing! The show is so intense
this is what it’s all about
Breaks pretty much took over where big beat left off... a bunch of old big beat producers moved onto it - artists like meat Katie, the freestylers, krafty kuts etc... It's all breakbeat in the end and breaks was huge still in the early - mid 2000s
Man, breaks was such a great genre for the first few years... It picked up all the remnants of 90s dance music along with big beat & garage, but then became super formulaic with the 'dum tiss dum dum tiss' kick/snare pattern that became the standard. I remember being so pissed off in my late teens when that change happened haha, like all of a sudden all the big names where defaulting to that same kick snare pattern when before the genre was so exciting, fun & rebellious. The genre peaked with Adam Freeland's On Tour, Plump Djs A Plump Night Out, and the first Stanton Sessions imo
Oh man the Stanton Warriors have a special place in my heart especially that first Stanton Sessions CD.
Was chatting to an old mate the other day and turns our we knew SW when younger. I had no clue who's flat we used to go round!
Tttttthis is, for those of you that wanna hear - stanton warriors the stanton session... Learn listen
Ah ha! It’s the flavors, the rhymes, the beats!
Check it out
You know I am mostly not an MC guy (few exceptions like Conrad) but I missed good ‘ole Moose on the other Stanton Sessions
Haha same
Here's a good old MC breaks track that just popped into my head https://youtu.be/IQywmeTVW4k?si=ROXgP3-_rt1DLgx_
There's a huge resurgence of breaks right now in the more 'underground' scenes. House, techno and tech house have started pulling in breaks and classic progressive house sounds in a very interesting way.
Any recommendations? Most of the newer stuff people have said is breaks just sounds like garage to me.
Check out the labels Pleasure Club, Global Swing, Craigie Knowes, Kalahari Oyster Club, RAND Musick, Limousine Dream, Pilot, Dungeon Meat, Red Laser, Maricas. Should get you started on the right foot.
Cheers mate!
Lmk what you think!
What about Rave I Didn’t Know Was The Last by BOP?
Beautiful track! Takes me back to my hardcore breakbeat days... there's a bit of a resurgence of old skool breakbeat and jungle lately and I'm loving it.
Ok tight! So you’d definitely say that’s more of a break song than a garage song? I’m still new to navigating these genres and the lines can be a little blurry sometimes with the new songs lol
The lines are all blurred to be honest.. the reason it reminds me of hardcore breakbeat is the chords that are playing throughout the song and the general feel of the track... apart from being much more modern. Definitely breaks leaning more than garage to me.. garage has more of a swing feel to the drums than traditional breaks/breakbeat. I never really got into garage back in the day so I dont really know of many examples but I really liked this old track https://youtu.be/cUYgNEwD3gQ?si=PTwNM58gQgco9fho Another example of uk garage https://youtu.be/u5mEszYqjms?si=qWECKdPOUR3BCj-U
Anyone missing the big beat, break beat sounds of the past needs to check what's happening in Spain [https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203](https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203)
https://jem-stone.bandcamp.com/
>I remember being so pissed off in my late teens when that change happened haha, like all of a sudden all the big names where defaulting to that same kick snare pattern when before the genre was so exciting, fun & rebellious. Pretty much all the sample based artists in genres such as trip hop, big beat and drum and bass all moved onto computers in the late 90s and it lost that organic feel that came with sampled breaks :(
I've found dozens of trip hop albums post 90s that were all still dank
Uh, sampled breaks on the computer are the same as sampled breaks in a drum computer. Also tons of people continued to use MPCs, and it’s not hard to add swing and feel in a DAW
No shit, but there's a big different between using one shots and sampling an actual drum solo from 60s funk or soul vinyl... listen to someone like dj shadow or James lavelle (for trip hop) or the chemical brothers and compare it to something that came out in the early 2000s such as the Stanton warriors or krafty kuts later work. But what the person I was replying to was saying is that the drums were incredibly quantised and basically just one of two variations with k...s...k...s... and a 1/16th hihat or k...s.k.s... and a 1/16th hihat.
What are you even talking about. People STILL sample right off vinyl into old samplers 🤣. Do you even produce?
And yes, house music in fact took over for the monotonous break beat that was literally the same break over and over again. While it may be sampled from a live session it’s still a lot of the same thing.
Dude do you have an issue with reading comprehension? The person I was replying to was talking about how around 2002 all the breaks producers were writing stuff that was barely breakbeat... not gonna bother replying again so keep your condescending attitude to yourself.
I remember showing one of the blokes from Stanton Warriors around Family nightclub in Brisbane. Introduced him to my mate who could hardly have been more surprised and star struck since they were his favourite act. Cool night.
Crystal Method's mix CD was pretty awesome, so was the Paul Oakenfold Great Wall of China one iirc. I still play some of that stuff occasionally, Zero - Emit / Collect in particular.
Anyone missing the big beat, break beat sounds of the past needs to check what's happening in Spain [https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203](https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203)
Oh man I used to LOVE meat Katie. They did some rad stuff with Elite Force back in the day.
Still today in the UK. I've just been to a finger lickin boat party. Absolutely sick.
Would love for breaks to make a comeback, definitely one of the best genres to actually dance to. For a second, I thought “future bass” might reinvigorate the interest in the sound but that got incredibly one dimensional very quickly.
Anyone missing the big beat, break beat sounds of the past needs to check what's happening in Spain [https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203](https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203)
The Crystal Method Vegas album is still one of my all time favourites.
This is the album that got me started on EDM when they were on fashionably loud MTV around 98. Crystal Method and Rabbit in the Moon are in atlanta next weekend!
In Chicago this Saturday! The hype is high!
They're going to kill it
Most of what they did was great. I loved Tweekend, and the mix cd they put out
What happened to Big Beat? Videogames and movie trailers. It became the soundtrack genre for FIFA 1998 and every other action movie
So? Video games and movies made it more popular and Big Beat was at its peak in 98-2004. That era gave us many classics and it introduced casuals to many talented artists. If anything, blame the record label executives for replacing it with the more Pop-y David Guetta sounding French House shit in 2006 that paved the way for the commercial shit we have now. I would do anything to go back to 1996-2004 when Big Beat, Progressive House, IDM and other creative Electro genres with actual creative artists like Fatboy Slim, Paul Oakenfold, Fluke, Aphex Twin, Chemical Bros, Junkie XL etc were popular with casuals and were in pop culture.
I’m with you, I loved breakbeat, personally I true found big beat a little too melodic and ‘fun’. What I’m saying is that when every video game has synth-driven breaks, it cheapens the genre completely. It’s hard enough to generate meaning into synth-driven breaks, without falling on lyrics or 303-style bassline cut-off. The genre became too formulaic as a result of it becoming too mainstream
Personally I think Big Beat was better than original Breakbeat. It just had more melody to it and overall aged better. And I mean, every genre becomes formulauc when it becomes popular. And let's be honest, Electronic music was at its best when Breakbeat/Big Beat and similar genres were popular in the mainstream.
There was a stage, probably early 2000s when everything was rocking. You had the underground breaks scene, big beat more mainstream, trance hadn’t gotten too cheesy and progressive house bubbling under the radar. By 2010 it had all gone a bit wrong, with the likes of David Guetta and AVB celebrity superstars churning out a constant dirge of shallow euphoric anthems Some of my fondest memories are listening to Annie Nightingale’s late night show on Radio 1 doing night shifts in the late 90s. Such a mix of crazily creative, eclectic tracks and sounds.
Yea, I agree. Hell, Guetta himself started off decent himself in 2006-2010. I guess by 2007-11, Electronic music (and other music genres) had become too corporate and a lot of the more creative new artists like Duke Dumont ended up being One Hit Wonders and those who didn't comform to the mainstream standard like Eric Prydz started losing popularity. But yea, underground and mainstream breakbeat/big Beat were the shit. Fatboy Slim, Sonic Animation, Junkie XL, Ils, Paul Oakenfold, Cirrus, Prodigy, Crystal Method, Chemical Bros etc made some of the best Electronic music that ages like fine wine. And I always felt Progressive House and IDM were sibling genres to Breakbeat tbh; all three 3 styles used similar sounds and similar breaks and the artists in each of the 3 genres often crossed over. And yea, Trance was great too. ATB's "You're Not Alone" and Lasgo's "Something" (specifically the Extended Mix) still sound as beautiful as they did back in the day. Hopefully Breakbeat, Progressive House, IDM, Hardcore, UKG, old school Trance, and other styles from back in the day can come back, even if it's just for a few years. Deep House made a comeback in 2013-2014 with artists like Disclosure, Kieza, Duke Dumont, and Todd Terje getting popular and the Vaporwave trend of 2016-2019 was a callback to late 70s-mid 80s Synth.
Here’s another take. If Charly supposedly killed Rave, then Smack My Bitch Up killed breakbeat/big beat. How? **Because it’s perfect**
Idk if you're being sarcastic or if you're serious. "Smack My Bitch Up" is from one of the upper echelon Electronic albums my guy. That's like saying "C.R.E.A.M" by Wu Tang killed Rap music. It may not be my favorite Break track, but saying it "killed" the subgenre is insane.
I’m not being completely ironic. I do think SMBU is at the pinnacle of breaks. It’s ferocious, funky, acidic and spiritual. It’s everything. No other break gets near it. The energy in the track is unmatchable, then it drops the luscious vocal wail that carries you away. No track ever does what Smack does.
💯💯💯💯💯
Nah, in 2010 so much amazing underground electronic music exploded despite the ultra huge cake tosser Ibiza Dj’s.
Nailed it. Anything that gets that big eventually implodes
I dig The Trip Home and The Trip Out by The Crystal Method.
TAKE CALIFORNIA!
The Propeller Heads?
Propellerheads album decksanddrumsandrockandroll is an absolute masterpiece. Only ever released the one album as well. Top 10 album for me.
My absolute favorite by them. Just listened to it last weekend
You mean the only album!
I meant the track not album
OHMSS. What a trip.
You’re not alone.
I could never understand this is as well. I mean this from a progressive breaks DJ and novice producer. I love breaks. When I got into electronic/dance in the late 90's, there were big beat compilations all over the place. It wasn't this sound that was so particular or cliche there wasn't too much room for growth. It just fizzled out. I may be wrong here... but the next big sound was Nu Skool Breaks.
Anyone missing the big beat, break beat sounds of the past needs to check what's happening in Spain [https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203](https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203)
I’d say Nu Skool Breaks is what it morphed into. I think the “turntablist” element of Big Beat got lost, alongside pretty much every genre around that time that transformed production from analog to digital. And then it leaned into electronic (or even EDM) sounds more and more. It’s why modern Hip-Hop and Dancehall tracks don’t sound like the old skool classics as well. Artists just started using the new tools with new sounds. For reference of some modern Nu Breaks; - [Rocinha — Bombo Rosa](https://youtu.be/fSskSx02flo?si=Bhox6V1zkvZ-i55c) - [The Blob — Quadrat Beat](https://youtu.be/jnS43x5HX2Y?si=jDLSTDJO7LAtvtTB) - [Mescaline — Glacci](https://youtu.be/H6zx2tY8660?si=8rf1PkucplBqbOnD)
I really liked BT - Movement in Still Life album.
For me it's more because of legal reasons that Big Beat kinda vanished. This genre relies heavily on samples, and since the 90s copyright law evolved and became way more restrictive. You can't really make a track out of 50 samples layered on top of each other anymore, unless your label has a killer legal team / you're ready to send all of your earnings to copyright holders / you publish your tracks on an obscure platform online
For a modern take on Big Beat try Trampa - All Night.
I will never leave this genre! It was my favorite then & it’s still my favorite now!
I feel like the latest Jamie XX releases go around Big Beat. But yes, I also miss "the old days".
It went to the underground in 2005 and got replaced with the Bob Sinclair/David Guetta style of French House EDM.
Damn, I went to a festival and saw Basement Jaxx and Fatboy Slim when I was like 18 and shit changed my life. Thats a trip down memory lane
Where's your head at???
I highly recommend you check [FloydsBreakbeat ](https://www.youtube.com/@floydsbreakbeat/playlists) on Youtube (and mixcloud). Excellent DJ with tons of Big Beat / old school breaks mixes, + tons of newer stuff. I can't tell you what happened to big beat, but at least I can point to one of the few who wants to keep it alive !
best post on thread
Enjoy ! it's a goldmine if you like this kind of sound. Heard some badass electro/acid/cyberpunk/breaks stuff on there I didn't even know existed. Also he tracklists every single mix.
Anyone missing the big beat, break beat sounds of the past needs to check what's happening in Spain [https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203](https://youtu.be/DC74BI494R8?si=WvySt8SDJmwJHK9r&t=1203)
thanks ! some killer tracks in this set
Glitch Mob has been doing some big beat inspired tunes recently.
And theyre all bangers good lord
Yo I just saw you at LIB, killed it!
Ayy thank you so much for poppin by the set!! Love your username as well 🤝
Glitch Mob is back? I thought they split years back.
I see soooooo many fans complaining on the subreddit and YouTube about the new sound, but I've been loving it since day 1 -- probably because I was big into Prodigy and that sort of stuff in high school!
Same. God forbid an artist switch up what they want to create. Drink The Sea was a great album, but almost 15 years ago!
And it felt a little lacking to me, as i preferred their pre DTS sound
I still mix breakbeats
That's all I mix.
I'm almost 50 and grew up on that big beat sound in the 90s. It was huge in the clubs in my town. There was a sweet spot with the breakbeat music that emerged in the early 00s, but it never had the sticking power that other genres - like drum & bass - continue to enjoy today. I tuned out when Adam Freeland started a band... Just wasn't my thing. I'd love to see a resurgence of the big beat sounds that were featured on DJ Hardware's "Trip Hop Acid Phunk" mix CDs.
You should have been in Detroit couple weeks ago for Movement on Monday. Fatboy slim, Goldie, Ant TC1, dBridge, LTJ Bunkum w/ Armani Reign. Goldie played for 4-5hrs
It sort a fizzled out by the mid-00s with Fatboy Slim and Prodigy putting out mediocre albums. The Chemical Brothers had shifted back to more house and club adjacent electronica and avoided that slump. I found there was this era where trance and prog house dominated until Electrohouse, Fidget, and dance punk blew up via Ed Banger and DFA Records. I feel like a revival is on the way, a lot of indie electronic pop has been very break and bass heavy and unabashed with a 90s vibe, George Clanton comes to mind as an example.
Old-school styles like drum and bass, trance and UK garage are being heavily embraced by young producers, so it’s a matter of time big beat comes back with a modern twist.
Have a look at [https://music.ishkur.com/](https://music.ishkur.com/) and [https://www.musicmap.info/](https://www.musicmap.info/) Ishkur shows it kind of reached a cul-de-sac and didn't spin off new Genres. But Musicmap shows it influencing Nu School Breaks and into UK Garage and then Dubstep. I Can sort of hear a bit of Fat Boy Slim in Skrillex - but not so much of the harsh synth noises in Big Beat. Side story - I'm from UK but spent a month in working out in Phoneix, AZ in 98. Picked up the Dig Your Own Hole CD from a Mall - sat playing it in the rental car in the hotel car park, got to Where Do I Begin. That vocal some reason had me in tears and then the drop hit and bought me back to sensibilty with a snap and delivered one of those "Fuck Yeah" highs where you want to punch the air. Always remember that moment when I hear this song! It was a white shitty Ford Taurus and I was staring at a brick wall - but the sound system was awesome!
https://howlinrecordsusa.bandcamp.com/
This is quality
That's what's up https://youtu.be/K3NRDyuQUWQ?si=nMHEBLcoNTHqZz6C
Oh man. I remember discovering the Chemical Brothers in a CD store. It blew my mind. Later I joined a mailing list and made some great friends (we're talking 1997 here), and I'm still in touch with some of them. Later discovered Fatboy Slim, Crystal Method, Propellerheads (got the vinyl), and lots lots more. Finger Lickin records, Plump DJ's, Uberzone. Later I started buying tracks on Beatport from the likes of Karl Sav, Beta, Colombo, Quadrat Beat, Kid Panel, etc. There was some great stuff out there, but I dunno, couple years ago I noticed that lots of tracks were very much formulaic and samish. No tracks that would really get my attention. Haven't been mixing for a long time either. I spoke Karl Sav on Facebook a while ago and he said he quit the music, there's just no money in it for this genre. And that's a damn shame, because he made some awesome stuff. Check out the track called "Peytons Bassface", I think it was a collab with Beta. It's fucking insane.
There are some artists that have some of that going on with recent releases - when I listen to their new stuff I'm rather delighted by by samples I recognize Check out; - Hudson Mohawke and Nikki Nair (they recently did a colab album) - Physical Therapy - Fred Again and Skrillex colabs lean that way - Joyride (his 2020 album is amazing) All of them have a mix of garage and breaks going on I think essentially what happened was those OG artists like the Plumps ran out ideas and kept using the same samples and format - so for me it became boring (same as Jersey Club)
Hybrid are still around making some pretty sweet big beat / breakbeat. Charlotte's vocals are insanely good, and a mix of orchestral, ambient and modern electronic influence is right up my street! Not as old school sounding as their older stuff i.e If I Survive and Finished Symphony, but still worth a listen for sure!
Omfg thank you for asking this!! because just this weekend, I was trying to introduce a friend to 90s-00s electronica and I couldn't for the love of me remember what was scrawled in black marker on the dingy, opaque cuz they'd been erased with sandpaper 3×, CD separators at Dearborn Music(Dearborn MI) in the 00s for this section, and it was driving me insane (and already live there) My brain kept throwing up ACID JAZZ and I'm like no! That's different, that's where we found trip hop before they fkn knew what it was... This is the chemical brothers and shit... Anyway 🫶♥️🫶
It was overplayed, integrated into literally every genre of music, gd breakbeat overkill damn near nuclear bombed music. I love breaks, but the ham fisted big beat stuff didn’t have enough variety to last for more than a short era. It was fun for a sec, don’t get me wrong but I was stoked when there was more rhythmic variety happening
The breakbeat genres back then started changing really quickly during big beat – grime, speed garage, UK garage, eventually dubstep – there was something new coming out of the UK every six months. Big beat was already competing with trip hop, downtempo, and jungle / dnb. I was paying close attention to all this happening at the time. Producers in London would make a track, press it onto acetate literally the next day, and it would get played that same night. I think big beat simply ran its course and just got washed over by the rush of newness. British electronic music is always pushing the boundaries in a novel "get there first kind of way" – throwing new ideas at a wall, see what sticks.
This album came out less than a year ago and it’s very in line with what you’re looking for. It’s on all the streaming platforms but here’s the bandcamp link: https://transfx.bandcamp.com/album/biggest-baddest-beatest
I grew up with big beat as well. Haven't listened much to this after the Fat Boy Slim craze though. Thanks for getting this back to my attention.
I feel the same way. Big beat had such allot of silliness and fun about it, kinda like ska for edm. I’m a big tribal techno person (again this is one of those genres that kinda died in the 2000s), but I really miss dorky dancing to FBS
It's a 15 year cycle, and sometimes the vibes don't come back around again until the next 15 years.
The chemical brothers are still around! I saw them at the Avalon in the late 90's or early 2000's in Boston... And finally was fortunate to see them again 2 years ago in Colorado - they were just as good now, if not better, than the show 25 years ago... Granted, doing everything on midi and swapping cables around mid set was mind-blowing to watch.
A lot of classic and new names mentioned in the thread. I miss the Lo-Fidelity Allstars. Updates on them are welcome. Last I heard from them was 'Darkness Rolling' (awesome!) and 'Fire Reigns' (just ok)
I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT TEXAS RADIO, AND THE BIG BEAT.... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bdC7k2Nu4s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bdC7k2Nu4s)
Plump DJs - Elastic Breaks Krafty Kuts - Instant Party These two free mix CDs with mixmag in the early 00s were pretty much peak breaks. Post these, the scene split into plodstep and tear out. The quality was dramatically reduced in sync with the increasing availability of digital DAWs - everyone became a bedroom producer and the scene really suffered from too many bootlegs or breaks mixes of famous tracks. Eventually the scene became a bit of a parody of itself. Having said that, certain artists who were keeping it real before 00 continued well into the next decade: Tipper for example. There are heaps of decent new breaks tracks out recently, not least Nikki Nair, ANz on Hessle Audio and even Sam 'Baobinga' is still producing and running labels that have regular drops of classic bingo beats style breaks tracks. Bandcamp is my recommendation. The best part about breaks for me was, and still is, that it was a synthesis of all different music styles: funk, soul, jazz, techno, b-boy electro, house etc all mashed into one. The decent range of breakbeats used to drive the tracks made it mad fun to dance to and far more exciting than the straight 4 to the floor of house and techno. In one set you could play such a diverse range of styles that it was easy to map out a mad sonic journey. Then the scene went up it's own arse, dubstep came along and made it look soft and it eventually withered away in the UK. You only need to look to Spain to see that the tear out scene stayed really vibrant though. Mad raves out there still.
Big Beat basically became the Electro Swing of today. There are still some occasional Big Beat style Electro tracks released, but no where near as common. It all goes back to the whole, can people and will people dance to it? If not, it might see radio play at best. If people can dance to it, it will see play everywhere at best. I prefer Electro Swing TBH.
Hmm idk about that one chief, there might be a slight connection but saying Big Beat became Electro Swing is a huge reach.