After enjoying a few years of relative popularity, it seems big-beat's appeal and relevance are waning. Like a designer club drug that delivers heady waves of euphoria before cutting out, leaving the brain depressed and deprived of seratonin, this hip-hop/breakbeat/techno (with a dash of rock n' roll) hybrid is rapidly fading. True, big-beat by the likes of the Chemical Brothers, the Propellerheads, and our subject at hand, Fatboy Slim has gone strong for a good two and a half years-- far longer than your average hit of ecstasy. After listening to Slim's latest, Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars, it seems we've reached come-down time. And surprise! It's no fun at all.
Like technology, the nature of electronic music remains in an eternal state of flux: constantly changing, evolving, and effortlessly remaining hip. Kitschy disco throwbacks and penchants for analog keyboards aside, subgenres like drum-n-bass and big-beat that combine, rather than defy, previous influences have a relatively short shelf-life. The dank, yellow-fluorescent glow of stagnation that emanates from Halfway is emblematic of the decline.
I'm tempted to give Norman Cook the benefit of the doubt and assume that he's at least slightly aware of this. After all, this is the guy who, on his solo debut, Better Living Through Chemistry, sampled the Who's "I Can't Explain" and transformed it into the hyper break-filled dancefloor throwdown "Going Out of My Head." This is the guy who carved funk out of the light jangle of Cornershop's "Brimful of Asha." These previous recordings and a slew of others, dependent on Slim's often impeccable taste for hooks and samples, have proven him able to reach virtuoso status when it comes to filling the dancefloor. In short, he's proven himself as a shrewd producer whose intelligence is not to be discounted.
It's perhaps because of these past successes that Slim seems a divided man on Halfway, his undeniably difficult third LP. At times, he continues his role of happy-go-lucky party music mastermind, as on the acid-house-tinged anthem "Star 69" or the similar "Retox." Both tracks feature incessant vocal samples of only a few words over throbbing, gooey beats. Slim's playing it safe here, doing what he knows he does best: mindless music meant for little more than dancing. Of course, with the current state of big-beat, these tracks sound all but redundant, but you can't fault a guy for preserving what he helped popularize, right?
Slim, though, apparently feels some pull from his previous Top 40 hits and tries a few stabs at reclaiming that popularity from the masses. If his big-beat tracks on Halfway are somewhat of a musical stagnant pond, the more commercial-minded tracks here are like the resident fish flailing and gasping for oxygen once the pond has dried up. The record's first single, "Sunset (Bird of Prey)," with its techno-lite arrangement and spooky Jim Morrison sample, is a glaring example. It's a mere quarter-inch away from Enigma territory and would have fit nicely on Pure Moods 3 had it been released in time.
Even worse than "Sunset" are the collaborations with neo-soul poseur, Macy Gray. "Love Life," in particular, allows Gray to ramble aimlessly for almost seven minutes over a quasi-funk/R&B; beat, rather than adhering to standard verse-chorus-verse conventions. At the song's conclusion, she breaks it down "Sesame Street"-style: "Said I'm gonna A ya/ And I'm gonna B ya/ And I'm gonna C ya, gonna D ya/ If I E ya, 'cause I wanna F ya/ Yeah, I wanna F ya/ Yeah, I wanna F ya." It's all really too embarrassing.
So, Slim gave it a third shot and ended up with a lackluster-- spotty at best-- finished product. Can't blame him for trying, as the problem lies more with the everchanging landscape of electronic music and the dying big-beat genre than it does with his technical skill. To paraphrase a character from last year's British slice-of-club-life film, Human Traffic, "When the comedown outweighs the fun, the party's over." This is exactly the problem with Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars, and most of the popular big-beat currently being offered. I hear two-step garage is gonna be massive, though. Can't wait.
