Fatboy Slim Rereleases ‘Better Living Through Chemistry’ For 30th Anniversary
The debut album from British musician Norman Cook will be rereleased as an expanded digital version.
Fatboy Slim’s debut album Better Living Through Chemistry is celebrating its 30th anniversary in style. The musician also known as Norman Cook announced that his debut will be rereleased in a deluxe digital edition on September 25. The expanded edition includes exclusive bonus tracks, including B-sides, new remixes from Sem Jacobs, Chinonegro, and Ammo Avenue, and rare material. The album can be pre-saved now.
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“Better Living Through Chemistry was basically me figuring out what I was doing. I was making music for the dancefloor, the bedroom, the afterparty and anyone who’d listen,” says Fatboy Slim in a press statement. “Looking back, it’s got all the mistakes, experiments and madness of that time in it, but that’s probably what I love about it most. It was the beginning of the Fatboy Slim adventure, and I’m amazed that, all these years later, people are still discovering it, dancing to it and asking me about it. It feels pretty bloody good to give it another lease of life.”
Featuring the singles “Everybody Needs a 303,” “Punk to Funk,” and “Going Out of My Head,” the release of Better Living Through Chemistry was a watershed moment not just in the Fatboy Slim project but in 1990s dance and electronic music in general. The musical movement that followed came to be known as Big Beat, which blended sounds emerging from London’s underground scene, including hip-hop, funk breaks, house, reggae, indie, and acid. “I’d walk down the street when I was a kid in the summer when everyone’s got their windows open and you’d hear reggae coming out of one house and then you’d hear house music coming out of another and then you’d hear Latin music coming out of another…” Cook told CNN after the album’s release. “The music I make would be a sum total of my favorite bits of what I heard.”
Better Living Through Chemistry kicked off an impressive career for Fatboy Slim. He followed the success with You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby in 1998, and Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars in 2000. His most recent full-length album, Palookaville, came out in 2004.
Shop the 30th anniversary edition of Fatboy Slim’s Better Living Through Chemistry here.
