Astralwerks / Emd
2000
Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars
About This Album
The cover of Norman Cook's breakout Fatboy Slim album, You've Come a Long Way, Baby, was a good clue to the contents, picturing as it did thousands of LPs straining the racks in Cook's record room -- undoubtedly just a small portion of his massive collection of sampling material. Inside, Cook unfolded a party record for the ages, long on fun (though understandably short on staying power), chock full of samples pillaged from all manner of obscure soul shouters and old-school rap crews, triggered and tweaked ad nauseam. With his third LP, Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars, Cook pulls away slightly from the notoriously fickle pop charts and crossover kids courted on his last record. Instead, he makes a conscious attempt to inject some real hedonism back into the world of dance -- he is a DJ, after all -- and sure enough, the cover matches those aims: it's a long shot on a beach (Ibiza or some other far-flung shore), with the sun shining out of someone's behind. The intro even pokes gentle fun at the loved-up R&B tradition with an extended sample from some bygone soul artist waxing overly poetic about his girlfriend. From there, Cook tears into an acid-techno rampage named "Star 69," a track that takes few prisoners and sounds closer to Plastikman than Propellerheads, though it does include the Fatboy Slim trademark -- a rather blue vocal sample repeated continually for nigh on a minute (funnily enough, the track was entirely removed from the clean version of the album).
Track List (try tracks 2,3,4,5,6,8,10 and 11)

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