Bigbadbaz

BigBadBaz (born Barry Christie on 3rd September 1983) is an English born dance music producer. Barry was born in Sunderland, Tyne & Wear but spent most of his life living in Northamptonshire. Inspired by the work of sampling artists such as Fatboy Slim and The Prodigy, Barry started to make sample based dance music in the late 90s. Continuing to produce music under the pseudonym BigBadBaz (a name suggested by friends as a moniker) he released his first productions on vinyl only in September 2002.

Barry was born in Sunderland, Tyne & Wear but spent most of his life living in Northamptonshire. Inspired by the work of sampling artists such as Fatboy Slim and The Prodigy, Barry started to make sample based dance music in the late 90s. Continuing to produce music under the pseudonym BigBadBaz (a name suggested by friends as a moniker) he released his first productions on vinyl only in September 2002. A mostly club based record, the vinyl still showed signs of what future productions would sound like with a wide range of samples from The Who, Rare Earth, The Dandy Warhols and Kool and the Gang.

Barry's continued use of samples became less derivative in 2002 and 2003 with more and more internet only releases using larger samples from tracks akin with the mash up scene that was growing at the time. This similarity brought Barry's music some publicity and found his music being championed by Radio stations across the world, cashing in the fad of mixing one or more popular songs together.

Continuing on with the same style of music that brought about Call On Me, BigBadBaz released a white label album Generic Prydz. The name was a light-hearted poke at the amount of copycat songs that were filling the dance floor in 2005. Calling America and So Many Nights on that album began getting some radio play so in 2006 these were picked up by Prank Monkey Records and given a vinyl only release. "So Many Nights" (even though technically a B-Side) began getting some airplay and was picked up by Radio 1 DJ's JK and Joel. Plans to release this as a separate single fell through at last minute despite gaining sample clearance from Johnny Bristol and Warner Music Ltd.