FEATURE:
Second Spin
Fatboy Slim - Better Living Through Chemistry
__________
THERE are a couple of reasons…
why I wanted to feature Fatboy Slim’s Better Living Through Chemistry. He recently played Glastonbury and brought his magic music to the masses. Also, I think his 1996 debut is underrated and not talked about much now. People know him more for his 1998 sophomore album, You've Come a Long Way, Baby. A few of the tracks on Fatboy Slim’s debut were from older projects. In a way, Better Living Through Chemistry is a compilation. Despite that, it is an album that hangs together and sounds coherent and flowing. The album's cover features an image of a 3.5-inch floppy disk, paying homage to the cover of New Order's Blue Monday single, which featured a 5.25-inch disk. Not that many people talk about Better Living Through Chemistry much today. You may hear the odd song played on radio, yet there is not too much else featured. I think that every track on the album is interesting and shows this incredible talent. As a producer and D.J., there is this sense of the freestyling alongside the professional and precise. Whether as Norman Cook, Fatboy Slim or part of Beats International, here is someone who is a pioneer and innovator. I love 1996’s Better Living Through Chemistry, and I feel that people should give it another spin. It has received a few mixed reviews. More than that, it is not discussed much as a truly extraordinary and important album. Listening back, and I think that this needs to change. I want to start off with a Pitchfork review from 2004. It is one of the more mixed assessments:
“Repetition. It's a integral part of most of the many segments of techno, and hey, and hey, and hey, when it's done right it can be a great way to build tension, give ya a chance to shake yer money maker, and feel the special throbbing in your head that only 10,000 watts of pounding bass can achieve.
Like the proverbial Fatboy hoarding roasted chickens and corn-nuts, Slim isn't wasting any beats. Taking a handful of samples for each track and looping them around and around one another in a decidedly uncommon dance mix, Better Living Through Chemistry is rife with guitar, funk and R&B; samples that come and go. But you're assured that you'll never hear a sample just once. Although Better Living is comparitively down to earth when compared to its Astralwerks stablemates (u-ziq, Photek, Fluke, Chemical Brothers), the closest comparison that I can offer would be Coldcut's less creative numbers on Let Us Play. Rather than trancing us out with space odyssey bloops and bleeps, Better Living prefers to offer us infinite loops of samples mutated far beyond recognition. Admittedly, the repetition can be a little maddening at home, but it's undoubtedly mad dance material. "Give The Po'man A Break" offers us a loop of a sample of someone saying (can you guess?) "Give The Po'man A Break" with every measure, over about four layers of percussive sound from heavy bass throbs to spastic, quick hi-hats and what sounds like an epileptic on a wood block. Periodically, tension builds culminating in a climactic change in aural scenery, lazer zips emerging in a whoosh from the dark to give us a break in the action. Most of the tracks on Better Living follow this general principle, with a few oddities on the mellower side. It's not bad, but it sure ain't in the top 99th percentile of its class”.
I am going to wrap up with a review from AllMusic. They were more positive when it came to an album that was released on 23rd September, 1996. I really love Better Living Through Chemistry and would urge anyone to listen to it:
“Fatboy Slim is one of DJ Norman Cook's many aliases, and has proven to be his most popular and successful yet. Although he consistently racks up dance hits in his native England (each under a different surname), he didn't achieve global success until the re-release of Better Living Through Chemistry in 1997. On the insistence of his friends the Chemical Brothers, Cook released the track "Going out of My Head" as the album's first single. Due to its popular video and instantly catchy sample from the Who classic "I Can't Explain," Cook earned his first U.S. hit. Another unlikely sample used to great effect was featured in the track "Michael Jackson," which used a snippet of Negativland's "Negativland." "The Weekend Starts Here" is similar to the Beastie Boys' funk instrumentals, featuring distant organ and lazy harmonica blowing (which sounds an awful lot like the harmonica phrase at the beginning of Black Sabbath's "The Wizard"). Recommended to those who can't get enough of the popular technoid-sampled alternative dance style of the late '90s”.
If you have not heard about Fatboy Slim’s debut album, I would advise people give it a spin. It is a remarkable and timeless album that is not just reserved to the 1990s. Although some songs have been played on the radio, I think that it is a superb and memorable work that…
NEEDS more attention.