Better Living Through Chemistry

Meh

I like Fatboy Slim, but this isn't close to his best album and really didn't need to be included on this list.

#58 Eh... repetitive

Probably good to vacuum to. I thought it was alright.

This was in for a rough ride, as it's not the album I'd choose to listen to while feverish with Covid. But while it's patchy, with some of the repetitive schtick working better than others, I can imagine that if you were in a situation where your body wasn't wracked by pain and fever and every cell wasn't crying out for it's own end, it might be kinda fun. Or maybe everything, including some guy called 'Fatboy Slim', and me writing this review, was all just a strange hallucination. Guess I'll find out in a few days, if I survive.

A great flight album

Not the Fatboy Slim I know and love but you can hear the rumblings of it. The opening 30 seconds was very “you wouldn’t steal a car” and “Going Out of My Head” was far and away my favourite track. I’d be happy to return to this album for the vibes alone.

Fun!! Contained no Fatboy Slim songs that I recognised and definitely felt like a step in his development towards the sound he was famous for, but this was some fun music. Bits sounded like an alternative Sandstorm or a a lost Prodigy song or even a slightly rockier dance music.

Really interesting sounds on the project - feels nice and experimental, good range. Quite long, definitely found it hard to get through it all, but there are cool moments and interesting sounds. I definitely enjoyed the middle third a little more where the tracks are more downtempo. Standout tracks: - Sunset 303 - Santa Cruz - Neal Cassady Starts Here - It's a Dream

Some cool sounds and good beats but a lot of repetition. Better to listen to single releases then full album.

Every song just repeats the same 3 seconds for 3 minutes, but damn are those 3 seconds catchy

More 🔥🔥 2x spin

I really like Fatboy Slim. This album was a fun one to chill out and nod my head along and have a wiggle to. The songs weren't that memorable and not his best album.

This is fucking shite

Many start with a good beat, then it just copies paste for two long with only minor incremental hype. Many feel like the waiting room of a sci fi video game, not enough to be a full song but good as background 'something might happen' music. Had mid expectations and was whelmed.

Some cool loopy and bouncy "riffs" but where's the songs guys?

Nu a bad one but it feels like the album needs a more punchy song to make it more memorable... Also I am not such a big electronic music enjoyer 3/5

Not great - and certainly FAR from the best this genre has to offer. So... I guess it's rant time... This feels like just one more example of Robert's desperate attempt to fill out his bloated-ass book in the face of his limited musical knowledge. We already have "You've Come a Long Way, Baby", so we didn't need another Fatboy Slim album over any of the number of missing artists that Robert's lazy British brain didn't know about and/or bother to research and include. If you wanted to stick specifically to big beat, Robert, how about The Crystal Method? Or if you don't mind branching out a wee bit, how about Lords of Acid or VNV Nation? Or shit - if you didn't want to leave the island, you could have picked up Messiah's '21st Century Jesus' or Paul Oakenfold's 'Tranceport'. I know the latter is technically a mix tape of sorts, but most of the mixes are original, so I fail to see how that would be any more disqualifying than other albums on this list that are nothing but covers. I'm RELUCTANTLY giving this a 2 to differentiate it from the large and ever-growing pile of unlistenable 1s on this list, but I really am reaching my threshold for tolerating how bustedly artist-repetitive/artist-snubbed this list actually is.

So what? The beats are fine, but lacks overall complexity and variety. Makes this hard to push through.

It was ok

I wanted to like this as I like later Fatboy Slim, but this is just boring.

Catchy but cannot listen for any length of time.

Love Slim!!!!

This is a twenty minute album of samples turned into an hour long album by just repeating it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. And over.

I wanted to find it fun but it just wasn't for me

Encore une fois, plus j'écoute du dance et du big beat, plus je m'y fais, bien malgré moi. Je souligne encore que c'est idéal pour une activité productive comme faire la cuisine ou travailler. Mais ça devient vite l'horreur en écoute active.

Enjoyed this more than I expected as I don’t normally like a whole album of dance music. Norman really does have the Midas touch!

If this album were accompanied by a Christopher Walken music video with Dune references, it would be five stars. It's still great without that weapon, but it is the unfortunate downside of big beat music that it all sounds pretty similar. Favorite track: "Give the Po' Man a Break"

Techno, Electronic whatever people want to label it is very creative though it utilizes samples and sounds. A lot of it is good, but great?! I will say that FS definitely brought something unique to the genre

Pretty soon, no one is going to understand this album cover.

Better than some of the earlier 90's UK electronica by a long shot. Enjoyable rythems. 4 out of 5

Jeg har egentlig ikke hørt så mye på Fatboy Slim utover hitsa, som er rimelig konsentrert til andre-skiva. Det er noe som holder meg tilbake fra å være ordentlig fan. Blir kanskje litt langetekkelig? Ofte innenfor samme låt. At han drar vært konsept litt for langt. På denne skiva ligger han nok litt nærmere klubb-musikk, noe som er både positivt og negativt. Foretrekker nok uansett de litt mer låt-aktige konseptene han koker opp på neste skiva. Mye kul sampling her! da Ønskte jeg hadde ideen til å bruke munnspillet fra The Wizard. En liten genistrek!

I'm sorry but this feels like something from a cheap old video game, not a highly regarded album.

why on earth does this one trick pony get 2 albums on the list?? I’m still suffering from PTSD after his last album (and the other shitty Big Beat garbage). Still I went in with an open mind and was actually grooving on it until Give The Po’ Man A Break. He runs every song into the ground with excessive repetition, here and even more on the other one. Wanted to give this a 1, like really really wanted to. So I did, fuck this redundant shit.

Not my style of music, but thought it better than the last FBS album I got, You've Come a Long Way Baby. This had no annoying vocals of someone preaching how good they are.

Album name could mean two things at least. I think about the strategies I used to get through double chemistry at school. In those days we sat at big wide tables with all the chemicals you could think of in glass bottles in a centre channel ready for experiments. Oh what fun we had playing football with the liquid mercury we poured onto the tables. But I suppose this album is referring to the chemistry used and consumed by Mr Slim to come up with this album. Judging by the music I’m so glad I got no further than the ammonium sulfide to make stink bombs as this album is. 2/5 4/10/26

Luminary work really, without context the beats fatty boy made here are slappers but still remain fairly primitive and reach predictable conclusions. Of course, context is everything, so the bubble bath of the acid wobble and the breakbeat core become something much more. First of its kind, stemming from the junglismassif and detroit sounds

3,0/5

Ark.

Electronic dance music is a genre I haven't really listened to since the early 2000s, and I've never even heard of this album. Absolutely great.

If music is the sountrack to your life, then this album is a find addition to that soundtrack. If instead you are an active listener, you might find this boring as fuck. The radio hits from this album are warranted, just interesting enough. The rest is repetitive and simple.

I like some of the grooves and what is laid over them but the repetitive nature gets monotonous to me quickly.

I don’t feel like this has aged well since 1996 but I understand the historical significance that places it in the pantheon of “stuff that get imitated or influenced culture”. Favorite track was “First Down” by a country mile.

Hj

It has some fun moments for sure, but am I going to listen to this again? Probably not.

More shitty than the second album. 3/5

WOWWWWWWW For once, I liked an album that had nearly no lyrics at all holy shit this one made me want to dance and go to the club and drink until I forgot my name LMAO 3 or 4

Fatboy Slim has some great songs, unfortunately none of them are on this album.

A lot has been made about the amount of late 60's, 80's British New Wave, and Elvis Costello on this list but lately I've been stuck in 90s Electronica land and I prefer all the above to it. This sucks. 2/10

I figured this must have been his first record. I’m a fanboy skim fan but I haven’t heard any of these. Not quite as good as where he’d end up but still a decent album.

Pretty good, all songs fairly similar so hard to pick a favourite.

This one was definitely not for me. I understand how Better Living Through Chemistry works as club music, especially in the ’90s, but as an album to sit down and listen to, I found it incredibly repetitive. Most of the tracks seemed to find a beat or loop and stick with it for several minutes before moving on to another repetitive section. “Going Out of My Head” was probably the best of the bunch for me, but even that suffered from the same problem. Eventually, I discovered a new listening technique: skip ahead one minute. Same beat? Skip another minute. Different sound? Give it a few seconds...then skip again. 😂 A lot of this reminded me of royalty-free background or intro music for a podcast. I can absolutely picture it working in a ’90s club, where the point is to keep people dancing rather than have them focus on individual songs. But that's not something I need to hear as an album. If I bought this on vinyl, I’d probably keep hitting the record player because I’d think the needle was stuck.

Some good, some mid. Jams were nice but not anything worth listening to again

The first 30-45 seconds of each song is fun, then I want to punch the wall. 1.2

Feels like a rave, but we’re in a circus tent. An ambivalent French mime is the DJ and the music is made mostly out of clown car horns.

Ah, yes, good, another feature-length electronic record with nothing but GarageBand-ass beats and robot voices muttering vague platitudes about "funk." This is better than that Leftfield album, I think, but you can't convince me this wouldn't be even better with some vocals of some sort, lol. Or maybe it'd be even BETTER if it had remained buried on Fatboy's hard drive. Get outta town!

I somehow thought Fatboy had sprung into life fully formed with You've Come a Long Way Baby, but its predecessor here might actually be marginally better. Or maybe it just sounds fresher because it's new to me. Either way I enjoyed it: repetitive, but chunky and funky.

Repetitive, ruined my 1001 mojo

Aldrig hört, kul att lyssna på!

It was fine for what it was. I have so much other stuff to listen to right now, I can't be bothered spinning it again. Meh?

I could copy and paste what I said about the other Fatboy Slim album - repetitive. Only this one is worse. 1.5

Great chunky beats. A little repetitive but very fun.

Do you think, this was cool back in the 90s.

fatboy mid

Καλό, πλούσιο, με ενιαία ατμόσφαιρα

I dug the second half a little more than the first, but damn this is pretty fun. That last track really got me in a groove.

It doesn’t care if you like it. It dares you not to. The production is skeletal (just drum machines, scratches, and a handful of riffs), but the confidence fills the empty space like thunder. This wasn’t just rap—it was a new era, and you can hear the door being kicked in on every track. Rating: 4.5/5 Short Review: Hip-hop growing teeth, spitting bars, and stomping in Adidas with zero apologies. Favorite Track: “It’s Like That” — the manifesto. Cold, direct, and still feels urgent.

Good enough to fit my appetite for electronic music, but to be honest I am not qualified to judge it at all.

Couldn't get past track 2.

Unimaginative, paint-by-numbers horseshit. I dislike EDM in general, but Fatboy Slim is the fucking worst of the lot.

Time & place had this listen been late night in Brooklyn circa 2002, right on. Driving around yesterday and doing work stuff, not really.

Not for me, certainly not while I'm sat here in the office

Very cool. Could easily listen again again.

What to say about this? Hard to know where to start. It's iconic, it's repetitive, it's genre-defining, it's overdone. Its all that. The advent of cheaper computers and web distribution made this sort of music take off. Loop mixing and the techno/dance/house/hall/whatever is so common now as to be irritating and blase. But I remember when this was fresh. It was fun. It felt real. It felt good to sit in a groove. And fbs does a really good job with each of these songs his mixing is so clean, with each transition just seamless and flawless. It's not my favorite music by any means, but I get it, I appreciate it, and I give it a thumbs up. Plus it gave us this gem: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JwZwkk7q25I

Much talent, not for me

This was pretty alright, but there were moments when I really found it kind of grating. Overall I enjoyed it, but I probably wouldn't listen to the whole thing again anytime soon. Three stars.

I liked this. Definitely not my normal listening genre but fast paced and pretty funky.

Fatboy Slim has that huge big beat sound which does edge slightly on the dated side however I find enough interesting in this album to make it a worthwhile listen and further listens wouldn’t be unwelcome. Also worth noting that this sounds hugely influential.

I did not like this. I am finding I really don't like electronic or dance music. I don't like instrumental songs, but these are worse because they are just the same sounds over and over again.

3/5

Good record. Santa Cruz was amazing. Some of the later tracks get lost in the percussion for me, but still a good experience overall.

Maybe I’d enjoy this in a rave, but I probably wouldn’t because I hate raves…

pretty good

In a year that also gave us Endtroducing, this album also set a standard for 90's mainstream techno.

A tale of two halves. Songs 1-6 are filled with monotonous, repetitive vamps in songs that go on too long and I was not looking forward to finishing the album. But this is why you listen to the whole thing! The second half of the album picks up the tempo, delivers the beats, and is more lively and engaging, culminating in "Michael Jackson" which is terrific and for me, easily the best song on the album. I'm generally an easy touch when it comes to Electronica. Give me hard, danceable (or at least head-bopping) beats and I'm happy. Fatboy Slim only delivers on half the album, and even then I wish the songs had a few more ideas in them to fill their running times, but that second half is still a fun listen.

★★½

Not usually my sort of thing, some of it was interesting, some of it was very repetitive which I guess is a thing… good to dance too maybe? Overall I enjoyed bits of it other bits just annoyed me a tad.

Have you ever wondered "what if Exit Planet Dust sucked?" Wonder no more. Bonus point for "Everybody Needs a 303".

Great fun

Being a huge fan of the following album, I was a bit embarrassed to have never listened to this one, but it was cool to hear samples here that end up on that album and influence specific songs as well, especially the last track showing glimpses of “Gangster Tripping.”

It had some good instrumental tracks but over time they started to mimic one song from the other. Enjoyed it while I listened to it.

Not released until September so hard to rate, but the one track they had (Song for Lindy) is very formulaic and dated.

Very surprising, I surprised anyone can like stuff.

Respectfully, this guy does not deserve more than one entry on this list. But surprisingly, it's roughly as good as the other entry, You've Come a Long Way Baby, despite being orders of magnitude less popular. Song for Lindy starts off unpromisingly but then introduces a ridiculously groovy synth line that absolutely tears up any preconceived notions about what this Fatboy Slim guy might sound like. It helps a lot, too, that there are no vocals. Plus, lots of differing song sections with a few change-ups in texture. The piano, soft bass, consistent drumming... it's an electronic music composer's dream-come-true. Next is Santa Cruz, a fairly sizeable step down because the hook (if you can call it that) on the guitar is precisely one note, relentlessly repeated, over... and over... and over... The more ambient middle section is a pretty big relief from all that. The Weekend Starts Here would be an decent Saturday morning alarm without even taking its name into account. Chill, positive, warm. The main bass-synth hook is pretty cool. A little repetitive, but then it's the 90s. Again the softer middle section, without the slightly dull percussion, marks a high point. Much more upbeat, with an uplifting I-VIIb-IV-V chord progression, is Going Out of My Head. It's decent. Nothing spectacular. The harmonies and synthetic drumming do get a little stale after a couple minutes. Everybody Needs a 303? Dunno about that... I certainly don't need one, given there's plenty to just sit back and listen to (and assuming he's talking about the Roland TB-303 bass-synth). Just two chords, I and IV – arguably the two that are the easiest to listen to for extended jam sessions. Cool. Beginning side 2 with Give the Po' Man a Break: "Give po' man a / Give po' man a / Give po' man a / Give po' man a / Give po' man a / Give po' man a / Give po' man a / Give po' man a / [supermarket checkout noises]" It's so hilariously terrible that it wraps around to being kind of enjoyable. In contrast, 10th & Crenshaw is just straight-up annoying. No idea which of the guys in the Fatboy Slim Suit ok'ed that voice-synth that only works in very specific famous examples (I'm blue da be dee). An ultra-solid bass part grounds the next song, First Down, one which also sports a cool little horn hook that only gets a little irritating after six minutes. Cool experimental outro too – something you don't hear much past the 80s. Punk to Funk straddles a line between repetition and having a catchy-as-heck horn line, with the latter winning me over. Finally, we have The Sound of Milwaukee. If biblically accurate, I'm glad I don't live in Wisconsin. (I jest. It's passable.) 3/5 Key tracks: Song for Lindy, The Weekend Starts Here, Everybody Needs a 303

It's missing what makes his other album on this list memorable, but it's still enjoyable.

Dance music isn't something that I would choose to listen. I'm aware of Fatboy Slim as his name was inescapable when I was growing up, but I always knew that his stuff is not my cup of tea. I will give him credit that most songs felt like they were actually building to something and weren't just repetitive for repetition's sake. Even the long tracks like "Santa Cruz" and "The Weekend Starts Here" kept my attention and didn't make me feel like I was wasting my time. Perhaps this was too intense for my morning commute, but I can respect the artistry on display here, even if the end product isn't for me.

Must have had the wrong chemistry. Didn’t turn me on.

Kinda whatever to me.

Fatboy Slim's got this knack for making my hips wiggle like they've got a mind of their own. It's a damn fun ride, like dancing on a beach with fireworks exploding overhead. A little more of that heat would've kept me moving longer, but it's a bloody good time nonetheless. Spins: 2 Playlist Additions - Song for Lindy - The Weekend Starts Here - Going Out of My Head - Everybody Needs a 303

Nah, didn’t get into this. Too many obnoxious electronic sounds that I didn’t like.