at a glance...

Hometown: Brighton, England
Year Formed: 1995

Personnel:
Norman Cook

Related Artists :
The Housemartins, The Beautiful South, Mighty Dub Katz, Beats International, Freak Power, Fried Funk Food, Wild Child, Cornershop, Beastie Boys, Underworld, The Chemical Brothers, and countless others...

Notes:
Norman Cook, originally with The Housemartins, began dabbling with a series of dance-music alter egos in the early '90s. In 1995 he was commissioned by Damien Harris to record the inaugural tune for Brighton dance label Skint, and Fatboy Slim was born with the "Santa Cruz" single. Cook took up a DJ residency at the soon-to-be-legendary Big Beat Boutique in Brighton, and his "Everybody Needs A 303" broke the Top 10 in Britain. A series of high profile remix jobs and the release of Better Living Through Chemistry saw Fatboy Slim join the Chemical Brothers and Bentley Rhythm Ace as leading lights of the British "big beat" boom. 1998's "The Rockafeller Skank" blew up as the undisputed single of the summer in Britain, and even broke through the defenses of America's technophobic radio programmers. The accompanying platinum album, You've Come A Long Way, Baby yielded Cook his biggest chart and radio success on both sides of the Atlantic in the form of "Praise You." The low budget Spike Jonze-directed video for the song became an unlikely phenomenon, collecting three MTV Video Music Awards, despite Cook's three-second cameo in the clip. Later in '98, Cook masterminded On The Floor At The Boutique, the first recorded DJ set from The Boutique.

To those unfortunate souls who have never experienced a night out at the infamous Concorde on Brighton's famed seaside, welcome to the fold. Now you need not get all dolled up to dance like an E-crazed young 'n' along with the sounds of Skint master Fatboy Slim. Culled from the many sets he DJ'ed at the Big Beat Boutique weekly party, On The Floor At The Boutique is a time-capsule that relives the epicenter of Norman Cook's resident DJ gigs and Skint's indelible influence on the music scene in the UK's hippest town.

As the liner notes indicate, the Boutique arose out of Skint and Cook's desire to have parties that mixed house, hip-hop, indie, funk, and anything else with massive beats, emphasizing F U N in big capital letters. And based on that recipe, On The Floor doesn't disappoint. This isn't an album to ponder the fate of the world to. Just one track tells you to just lay back and let the big beat lead - and that's the best possible advice.

On The Floor delivers a quintessential Fatboy groove that is part eclectic genre-bending fusion and part energetic freak-a-zoid freestyling. Cook pieces together tracks like Clockwork Voodoo Freaks' "Deaf Mick's Throwdown" and the Jungle Brothers' "Because I Got Like That" to emphasize the aesthetic. Things get jumpin' pretty fast around Mr. Natural's "That Green Jesus," sliding into album highlight "The World's Made Up Of This & That." By this point you'll be wondering why you weren't at the Boutique more often.

For heaven's sake, DON'T play this album in a room by yourself. This is an instant party mix: add about 75 friends (or whoever you can drag off the street), a slammin' sound system and serve it hot like fire. Chef Fatboy has done all the work so you have more quality booty shaking time.