Fatboy Slim.(BRIEFLY NOTED)(Sound recording review)

Fatboy Slim. The Greatest Hits: Why Try Harder. Skint/Astralwerks ASW 56814, 2006.

Norman Cook got his start in 1986, playing bass for British guitar-pop legends, the Housemartins. But it was not until that group disbanded two years later that he really found his calling: first he recorded two utterly delightful albums of funky copyright infringement under the name Beats International (Let Them Eat Bingo and Excursion on the Version, both out of print and worth almost any effort to locate on the used CD market), and then he rechristened himself Fatboy Slim and his career really took off. Equally popular as a DJ, a remix artist, and a purveyor of original material, Fatboy Slim is one of the architects of the dance music genre known as Big Beat: a fusion of house, funk, hip hop, dub, and techno recognizable by its reliance on fat, funky breakbeats and often humorous sampling. Cook's signature style is characterized by both the creative use of weirdly cut-up vocal samples (his biggest hit, "Rockafeller Skank," is recognized ...