Big Beat!

rivetrenuck

Well-known member
Dear all,

Here I am again asking Genre specific questions and recommendations. i know its not healthy to categorize music in such a way, but when i am searching for a specific sound, i find it helpful.

I was going thru John Eden's Blog and came across this term Big Beat. Never heard of that genre, thank god it was linked to an older article that gave some good examples and a little history.
http://www.uncarved.org/blog/2004/03/bad-motherfucker-on-two-turntables-go-off/

this is amazing, as this is the sound that got me into dance music the first place. of course the sounds i heard were mostly from Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy and Fatboy Slim's Music Videos. it was only after reading John article that i realised there is more.

So if anyone knows more artists, releases, good record labels and of course sets please post up here.
Also been hunting for the Jon Carter & Cut La Roc - Mockers mixtape, no where to be found!

Thank you all for being so great!
 

wascal

Wild Horses
I'm waiting for someone in east London to start playing it and seeing how long it is until people claim they've started a new genre :p

I've got some tunes on Cut La Roc's current label, next time I see him online I'll ask if he's got that mix
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I remeber having that Bentley rhythm ace album back in the day, fuck knows what I'd think if I heard it now though. Bigbeat seemed to be a very 'NME friendly' sort of music for some reason. Certainly it was the only genre of dance music I remember getting written about positively in NME back then.

I will still stand by (some of) the first two chemical brothers albums and even Fatboy Slim had a couple of good uns. Good fun and some good stuff with sampling going on which you don't get much nowadays.
 
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FairiesWearBoots

Well-known member
I remeber having that Bentley rhythm ace album back in the day, fuck knows what I'd think if I heard it now though. Bigbeat seemed to be a very 'NME friendly' sort of music for some reason. Certainly it was the only genre of dance music I remember getting written about positively in NME back then.

I will still stand by (some of) the first two chemical brothers albums and even Fatboy Slim had a couple of good uns. Good fun and some good stuff with sampling going on which you don't get much nowadays.

yeah I miss samples! Loved them in PE, Love them in Horsepower etc etc

what happened to the samples:mad:
 

rivetrenuck

Well-known member
I just love the sound big drums!. Something that has been subconciously coming thru in my own productions.

People here might hate this, but when i was trying to hunt down the sound of the big beat without realising that it had a genre of its own, i found Meat Katie, Elite Force and some of dem lot. I will be honest, i did really like some of their stuff, it was like a combination of Big beat and deep house.

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rivetrenuck

Well-known member
I've got some tunes on Cut La Roc's current label, next time I see him online I'll ask if he's got that mix

Please remember and post it up here when you get a chance.

Also if there are any Hardknox sets?

Thank you very much!
 
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wascal

Wild Horses
Definitely NME friendly, In fact the Fatboy Slim 'Beat Up The NME' tape was awesome back when I was a nipper. The whole things on Youtube, these 10 mins were my favourite bit:

 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Yeah, I remember that tape! I see its got Double 99 on it too, straight-up speed garage that is! Back then I wouldn't have known the difference, though I do remember Armand Van Helden getting kind of lumped in with this sort of stuff too in this context.
 

hint

party record with a siren
Most of the stuff I associate with that era probably falls under the banner of cut and paste Hip Hop / Party Breaks. I think the roots of it lie in the likes of Kenny Dope's Supa Cat break, Zulu War Chant etc.

UK producers with their copies of Ultimate Breaks and Beats, speeding things up a bit. Of course, the Hardcore / Jungle guys were doing the same, but pushed things much further.

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john eden

male pale and stale
Oh I'm glad you liked that piece :D

My recommendations are in there really, tho STN has also recommended the Jon Carter live at the Heavenly Social mix.

Coldcut's Journey by DJ was also on that tip, tho a bit less boshing.

I'll try and upload that Mockers cassette if I get time (i.e. not soon).

It could do with a revival maybe, things are pretty serious now...
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Does anyone else see kind of a functional / structural / spiritual analogy between big beat and breakcore?
 

Leo

Well-known member
never cared for big beat at the time, always thought of it as dance for indie rockers, lowest-common denominator dance music...then a friend gave me a free ticket to see fatboy slim at hammerstein ballroom in nyc and it was a fucking blast, a wild drunken party with women in the crowd dancing topless, crazy shit!

ok, i still never went out and bought any big beat stuff or paid great attention to it, but have to admit it was great mindless fun that night.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Does anyone else see kind of a functional / structural / spiritual analogy between big beat and breakcore?
To elaborate a bit - insofar as they're both basically messy / fun / silly / druggy / boozy party music (albeit for a fairly specialized type of fun party in the case of breakcore, but look at eg Bang Face), both slightly studenty / indie kid friendly, both engage with older forms of 'street' music in a basically respectful but slightly decontextualized way, both have a sort of open-ended anything-goes approach but without ever feeling like they're about to do anything radically new...
 

hint

party record with a siren
As for any revival talk...

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Something like Badman Riddim wouldn't have sounded out of place on a Big Beat era cover cassette.

I remember borrowing the Jon Carter Essential Mix CD off my sister and playing it a lot:
http://www.discogs.com/Pete-Tong-Paul-Oakenfold-Jon-Carter-Essential-Mix-4/release/82293
 
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john eden

male pale and stale
To elaborate a bit - insofar as they're both basically messy / fun / silly / druggy / boozy party music (albeit for a fairly specialized type of fun party in the case of breakcore, but look at eg Bang Face), both slightly studenty / indie kid friendly, both engage with older forms of 'street' music in a basically respectful but slightly decontextualized way, both have a sort of open-ended anything-goes approach but without ever feeling like they're about to do anything radically new...

Yes absolutely, although breakcore has its serious side as well (Praxis label etc) but the whole cut and paste and "unauthentic" thing is there.

Also breakcore descended into unfunny "hilarity" quite quickly in the same way big beat did.

But yeah, mad beats stupid samples, good times!
 

cobretti

[-] :: [-] ~ [-] :: [-]
I used to be quite in to Fatboy Slim etc when I was in P6/P7, but was obviously too young to really get in to it much further than that. Me and my brother did spend a lot of summer 98 streaming the Fatboy Slim Vs. Armand Van Helden mixes off of the Skint site though, I was well gutted when they took it down :cool:

On another note, that summer I did get to go to T In The Park with my mate from school as his dad was DJing in the Slam Tent. I got to meet Carl Cox, The Roots, saw Green Velvet at the age of 11 and ended up blasting Fatboy Slim in the face with a supersoaker on the stage at the end of his set as I danced on his tour manager's shoulders. That story made me feel cool for about 3 years afterwards! Cool story bro.
 

mos dan

fact music
Definitely NME friendly, In fact the Fatboy Slim 'Beat Up The NME' tape was awesome back when I was a nipper. The whole things on Youtube, these 10 mins were my favourite bit:

bit of a headfuk to see this come up on dissensus for me, i haven't thought about it for well over a decade - but i RINSED this tape. integrity caveat (give a shit rly, but whatever): i was 14/15 and mostly listening to elastica and urusei yatsura at the time. i remember getting drunk on cider and arguing with some girl at a party who dismissed the pierre henry opener as 'fairground music' like that was a bad thing. i went to a couple of (heavenly social?) things in that club in farringdon when i was still underage, almost certainly my first clubbing experiences, on reflection.

thx for the unexpected trip down memory lane ;)
 

hucks

Your Message Here
I was a student in Brighton in the mid/ late 1990s. I didn't stand a chance...Actually, one night at Big Beat Boutique was pretty much the most FUN I've ever had in a club. But the Fatboy Slim on the beach thing where a quarter of a million people turned up in Brighton was pretty much when I decided to move to London.

And i saw Fatboy Slim djing at Bestival in like 2003 or 2002 and it was the worst thing I've ever ever seen in my life. He wasn't even playing Big Beat by then, just really bad house.
 

ether

Well-known member
I haven't heard any big beat for a long time, i know skint went though a hard time in the early noughties, and they dropped of loads of artists, when the sound kind of died on its arse. I met quite a few people from this scene when i lived in Brighton. A mate of mine shared a studio with Lo-Fidelity Allstars. Preety much everyone I met seemed very unpretentious and non-hipstery. That kind of seemed to reflected in the music, quite fun sample heavy inconsequential party music. I much preferred this sound i have to say than the flaccid 'breaks' scene it was superseded by.
 
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