Fatboy Slim – Better Living Through Chemistry For Sale

 After a second coming with chart-toppers Beats International following his stint in The Housemartins, Cook had an acid house epiphany. He got into making tunes under names like Pizzaman and Mighty Dub Katz, as well as co-founding Freak Power. But it was as Fatboy Slim that he captured the good-time zeitgeist and eventually became one of the late-90s formidable superstar DJs. His debut, Better Living Through Chemistry, is more of a compilation than a proper album per se. Much of it had already been released, either as singles or via Skint s Brassic Beats series. Indeed, along with Skint, he helped spearhead an array of chiefly Brighton-based banging at the Big Beat Boutique club night (a sort of south coast response to London s Heavenly Social). The blueprint was already there: the beats were big, the house was mostly acid; the funkier end of crate-dug breaks prevailed, and there were cheeky lifts and samples ahoy. The key track, however, was Everybody Needs a 303: a champion acid monster of a tune, it encapsulates the Fatboy ethos in just under six minutes. Sixteen years on, Better Living Through Chemistry stands tall as the sound of abandon and messiness, a joyous soundtrack to an era of caning it and the third (or fourth… or fifth?) Summer of Love. Though you ll probably have to ask your parents what that thing on the cover is.