A word used by the media to describe the revival of electronic music in popularity in the mid to late 1990's. Specifically, it referred to electronic music with a sound influenced by rock (with live drums instead of electronically produced percussion) and a little bit of hip-hop (mainly breaks/samples). This style, while called electronica by the mass media, became known as
Big Beat (which I will use to describe "electronica" from now on in the definition) by many others, and it included subgenres such as Chemical Breaks and
Funky Breaks, too. Big Beat eventually fell out of fashion, mainly its focus on breaks made it unoriginal; there were only a few dozen breaks that producers used, so it became repetitive.
However, some of the people making
big beat back during it's heyday are still producing this type of music, most notably The
Chemical Brothers, who won the Grammy award for best electronic/dance album in 2006 (for the album "Push The Button").
Person A: Did you listen to that new
Fatboy Slim album? That was some great electronica!
Person B: It's
big beat, not electronica. (Person B walks away from Person A and sighs.) Stupid media.
Examples of big beat groups: Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers,
The Crystal Method, The Prodigy (starting in 1997)