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Ranked list

The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

Big beat and the British breaks tradition that ran alongside it: the Brighton and London wave, the samples-and-volume school, and the nu-skool breaks producers who carried the tempo forward after the big beat name became an embarrassment. From 1989 to 2004, with two exceptions ranked on merit past the close. Progressive house and the album-rave tradition are a different lineage and are ranked on their own page, which is where Leftfield and Underworld sit.

Big beat was a Thursday night in Brighton before it was a genre. The Big Beat Boutique had a licence, a sound system and no interest in whether a record was house, hip-hop or the Stooges, and the producers who played there started making music that fitted that room specifically: a breakbeat, something sampled and loud, and a structure borrowed from rock rather than from the mix.

It went from a club night to a stadium in about four years, which is the fastest ascent of any music on this site, and it aged worse than any of them. By 2001 the word was an insult. What survived is a smaller and better catalogue than either the boom or the backlash suggests, made mostly between 1994 and 1999 by people who could actually construct a record.

The window opens in 1989 because that is where the tradition starts rather than where the name does: Storm the Studio and Soundclash are the thing itself before anyone had a word for it. It closes in 2004 because after that the lineage splits into things with their own names and their own audiences, and the records that follow are not big beat made later. They are different music that inherited a BPM.

The ten

  1. Number 1 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    The Chemical Brothers — Dig Your Own Hole1997

    № 21 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

    The genre's one indisputable masterpiece. Block Rockin' Beats at the front, Noel Gallagher in the middle, and an ending that abandons the format entirely for nine minutes of sitar and choir. Constructed rather than compiled, which almost nothing else here is.

    Why it is number one

    Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons had already proved they could make a room move. Dig Your Own Hole is where they proved a big beat record could be built rather than assembled. Block Rockin' Beats is the single everyone remembers and Setting Sun is the one with Noel Gallagher on it, but the case rests on the last twenty minutes: The Private Psychedelic Reel runs nine minutes, brings in a sitar and a wordless choir, and resolves an album that started with a drum break into something closer to psychedelia than to dance music. Nobody else in this genre attempted an ending like that, and most of them did not attempt endings at all.

  2. Number 2 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    The Prodigy — Music for the Jilted Generation1994

    № 13 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

    Rave grown paranoid and armed, made by a producer who had watched his scene get legislated against and took it personally. Their Law and Voodoo People are the famous ones; the record is angrier and stranger than either, and it is the only album here with a political argument.

  3. Number 3 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    Fatboy Slim — Better Living Through Chemistry1996

    № 77 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

    Norman Cook assembling chart music from second-hand vinyl in a bedroom, with the pop instincts of someone who had already been in two successful bands. The founding document, and considerably more inventive than the career that followed it suggests.

  4. Number 4 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    The Chemical Brothers — Exit Planet Dust1995

    № 67 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

    The debut, rawer and more hip-hop than what came after, and the record that established the template everyone else worked from. Leave Home is still the clearest statement of what the genre was for.

  5. Number 5 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    The Prodigy — The Fat of the Land1997

    № 88 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

    The one that went to number one in twenty-five countries and got them banned from radio. Firestarter and Smack My Bitch Up are the reason, and underneath the controversy Liam Howlett's programming is at its most precise. The genre's commercial ceiling and it earns the position.

  6. Number 6 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    David Holmes — Let's Get Killed1997

    № 224 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

    The Belfast DJ wandering New York with a tape recorder, collecting voices from strangers and building tracks around them. Big beat with literacy, and the record that pointed at the film-scoring career that followed.

  7. Number 7 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    Propellerheads — Decksandrumsandrockandroll1998

    № 250 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

    Spy-film swagger, immaculate drum programming, and Shirley Bassey talked into a duet that became a hit in several countries. The most purely enjoyable record in this field and the least embarrassed about it.

  8. Number 8 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    Meat Beat Manifesto — Storm the Studio1989

    № 153 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

    Five years early and made in Swindon. Jack Dangers sampling culture into breakbeat before big beat, jungle or industrial dance had names, and half the producers who followed took it apart for parts without saying so.

  9. Number 9 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    The Crystal Method — Vegas1997

    America answering Brighton, with more low end and less irony. Busy Child alone justifies the record and the rest holds up better than its licensing history suggests.

  10. Number 10 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    Renegade Soundwave — Soundclash1989

    № 172 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

    London dub-punks with a sampler and a grudge, prefiguring both big beat and UK bass culture while neither existed. Probably a Robbery is the famous one and the album around it is meaner.

Eleven to twenty

Ranked, and held to the same rules as the ten.

  1. Number 11 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    Fatboy Slim — You've Come a Long Way, Baby1998

    The commercial summit, and four singles deep before it thins. Better Living has the better back half.

  2. Number 12 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    Hybrid — Wide Angle1999

    № 237 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

    Welsh breakbeat recorded with a Russian orchestra at Mosfilm. Cinematic in the way everyone else claimed to be.

  3. Number 13 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    Depth Charge — Nine Deadly Venoms1994

    № 234 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

    Kung-fu samples and breakbeats before anyone had a word for it. Trip-hop with a body count.

  4. Number 14 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    The Prodigy — Experience1992

    № 43 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

    Rave's last great album before the genre fractured, and the tradition forming rather than something outside it.

  5. Number 15 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    Death in Vegas — Dead Elvis1997

    Dub-punk menace before the Contino Sessions turned them into a rock band. The darkest record in this field.

  6. Number 16 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    Lo Fidelity Allstars — How to Operate with a Blown Mind1998

    Big beat's gutter-poetry variant, and considerably stranger than the scene's reputation allows.

  7. Number 17 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    The Chemical Brothers — Surrender1999

    № 249 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century

    Where they turned toward psychedelia and Bernard Sumner. Less brutal than Dig Your Own Hole and better sequenced than most of what surrounds it.

  8. Number 18 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    Plump DJs — Eargasm2003

    Nu-skool breaks at its most musical, and the best record the style produced once big beat's name had become a liability. It kept the tradition working rather than showing it a way out.

  9. Number 19 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    Wiseguys — The Antidote1998

    Ooh La La made it inescapable in adverts, which has obscured a genuinely funny and well-made record.

  10. Number 20 on The 10 Best Big Beat and Breaks Albums

    Monkey Mafia — Shoot the Boss1998

    Jon Carter's only album, dub and breakbeat pulled together with more grit than his Heavenly peers managed.

Near misses

Records considered and not ranked, with the reason each fell short.

  • The Chemical Brothers — Push the ButtonNot eligible

    One of the two records ranked past the window's close, and it finishes outside the twenty rather than inside it. Galvanize is the argument; the album around it is uneven.

  • Meat Beat Manifesto — AutoimmuneNot eligible

    The second named exception, and the odd position of one producer holding a record at each end of the window. That looks like special treatment and it is what happens when a career brackets a genre's entire life.

    № 222 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 21st Century

  • Bentley Rhythm Ace — Bentley Rhythm Ace

    Car-boot-sale big beat, and the comedy wing done properly. Charm rather than weight.

  • Hybrid — Morning Sci-Fi

    The record where nu-skool breaks stops sounding like big beat's continuation and starts sounding like its successor. The strongest evidence the tradition survived its own name, and outside the twenty only because what it survived into belongs to a different page.

  • Sabres of Paradise — Haunted Dancehall

    Weatherall's mid-nineties laboratory, and London dub noir made by someone who had already produced Screamadelica and had nothing left to prove. It shares this page's samples, its volume and half its audience, and it belongs to the tradition rather than to the genre.

    № 63 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century · № 7 on The 10 Best Progressive House and Rave Albums

  • Coldcut — Let Us Play!

    Ninja Tune's founders at their most maximal, cutting and pasting with more restlessness than big beat usually allowed. It is the cousin that stayed in the studio while everyone else went to the festival.

    № 226 on The 250 Best Electronic Albums of the 20th Century · № 18 on The 10 Best Downtempo Albums

How this list was built

Ten from 125 records considered, running from 1989 to 2008. The field took in the Skint and Wall of Sound rosters, the American wave, the nu-skool breaks producers and the two records ranked past the window's close, because a list drawn only from the boom years would miss both where this music came from and where it went.

The window opens at 1989 and closes at 2004, with two exceptions ranked on merit: the Chemical Brothers' Push the Button and Meat Beat Manifesto's Autoimmune. Both are by producers central to the tradition and both continue its argument rather than inheriting its tempo. That leaves Meat Beat Manifesto holding a record at each end of the window, one at the opening and one past the close, which looks like special treatment and is what happens when a career brackets a genre's entire life. Leftfield and Underworld appear in the pool and are not ranked. They shared bills and audiences with this scene and belong to a different tradition, and putting them here would make this page a survey of British dance music in the nineties rather than a list about big beat.

Every big beat / breaks record on this site, ranked within its own canon rather than against each other, is on the big beat / breaks genre page.

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