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Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars JON PARELES
Where other electronica whizzes
chase dance microgenres down futuristic blind
alleys, Norman "Fatboy Slim" Cook mines riffs from
every era like a hip-hop DJ. His big beat kicks
down the velvet-rope exclusivity of drum-and-bass
or two-step garage to welcome everyone, rockers
and funkers included. "I'm gonna hold my cool,
'cause the music rules," P-Funk's Bootsy Collins
states in "Weapon of Choice" on Fatboy Slim's new
album, Halfway Between the Gutter and the
Stars.
Cook hasn't given up the dance-floor stomps
that made him a million-seller with "The
Rockafeller Skank," "Praise You" and the 1998
album that held them, You've Come a Long Way,
Baby. His new album has its own catch phrases
-- "What the fuck," "Push the tempo," "Retox the
freak in me" -- with happy, gimmicky tracks to
match, full of giddy anachronisms that could be
called "retronica."
But even a party animal can sprout ambition.
Following through on the gospel in "Praise You,"
the album moves from physical urges to spiritual
needs. It begins by leering through "Talking Bout
My Baby," and goes clubbing with chant-topped
techno ("Star 69") and tranced-out Jim Morrison
("Sunset [Bird of Prey]"). In "Love Life," Macy
Gray rides a squelchy, neo-P-Funk track, making
sultry double entendres from lists, including the
alphabet: "Gonna D ya, if I E ya, 'cause I wanna F
ya." Danceable riffs ricochet through "Ya Mama"
and "Mad Flava," with fuzzed guitars, buzzed
keyboards and voices from raps to dance-hall
growls to filtered loops. "Weapon of Choice" piles
up vocal samples in a syncopated crossfire worthy
of the BaBenzele pygmies.
Yet as the festivities peak, Cook seeks a
higher plane. Putting looped rhythms behind a
preacher (nineteen years after David Byrne and
Brian Eno did), he revs up the Rev. W. Leo Daniels
in "Drop the Hate" with double-time drums and
sputtering synthesizers. Gray returns singing a
club-going believer's promise -- "All of your
demons will wither away/Ecstasy comes, and they
cannot stay" -- over gospel piano chords (sampled
from Bill Withers) that get mixed with Hare
Krishna finger cymbals and electroboogie zaps.
The eleven-minute finale, "Song for Shelter,"
megamixes the album's first two songs into a
meditation on unity and spirit, "as if Jesus was a
DJ himself," moving from house thump to three
minutes of beat-free chordal mantra to a closing
chant. The song is overextended, and the album
isn't as much flat-out fun as You've Come a
Long Way, Baby. But Cook isn't just partying
on. He's partying to transcend. (RS 854)
From
Rolling
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