Better Living Through Chemistry

Fatboy Slim

album cover

Staggeringly Creative Groove Constructions

Like many DJs, Norman Cook—the journeyman former rocker who makes dance music under the name Fatboy Slim—builds fine, wiggly grooves out of tiny bits of old records. Equally important to the beats on on this breakthrough, though, is his sense of drama. Consider his tune "Everybody Needs a 303," which uses the bass line and vocal hook from Edwin Starr's "Everybody Needs Love." After it's been percolating for a few minutes, the drums nearly vanish into an oceanic wave of white noise. Then, slowly, the sounds clarify—we hear a chanting crowd in a stadium, followed by a bubbling synthesizer figure that morphs from a round blob to a knife-edge as it repeats. When the vocal sample returns, it's chopped into ever-smaller pieces as a rumble intensifies beneath it. Then the snare drum barrels in, surging and rolling with such power it threatens to explode the speakers as it crests.

That little episode lasts over a minute, and changes everything. When the groove finally returns, it travels at a different velocity. The drums seem bigger and better than before. Experience this crescendo (or one of the many others on Better Living) on a dance floor, and you may feel it as a timed-release drug, spreading a sudden wave of euphoria.

Cook first attracted attention as the bassist of the (very smart) British jangle-pop band the Housemartins. Applying the tricks of the songwriter trade to his club incarnation, he creates instrumental passages that are riveting in ways much repetitive dance music is not, studded with interesting chord changes and other sound-collage manipulations. Along with its follow-up, You've Come a Long Way, Baby, this record influenced much of the popular electronica of the 1990s. The rippling "Give the Po' Man a Break" sounds like the template for every track on Moby's hit Play (1999), while "Going out of My Head" finds Cook showing how even harsh rock power chords (courtesy of the Who's "I Can't Explain") can, with the proper sorcery, wind up feeling groovy.

Genre: Electronica
Released: 1996, Astralwerks
Key Tracks: "Santa Cruz," "Going out of My Head," "Everybody Needs a 303," "Give the Po' Man a Break"
Catalog Choice: You've Come a Long Way, Baby. The Housemartins: London 0 Hull 4.
Next Stop: The Chemical Brothers: Dig Your Own Hole
After That: Prodigy: The Fat of the Land
Book Pages: 271–272