Neil Spencer CD OFTHEWEEK This DJ-as-superstar lark has been getting out of hand for some time now. Let’s be clear: musicians make music, disc jockeys play it, and a box of rarities and mixes to scratch and sample don’t amount to a hill of beans, though they can add up to an awful lot of money.
Norman “Fatboy Slim” Cook, however, is an exception. He’s a real musician who’s been in bands. He’s no preening ego but a regular bloke. His records have their moments, too, splicing infectious rhythms with bright samples.
But both the mega-platinum You’ve Come a Long Way Baby and Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars (Skint), its follow-up, invite qualifications. It’s clear, for a start, that without his collection of vintage soul, from which most of the voices here come, Norm would be in trouble. Wisely, he’s got together with Macy Gray for a couple of cuts, the brooding Demons being one of the record’s stand-outs. Fatboy Slim’s heart, one senses, is less in “big beats” than in old funk, so while he dons his techno hard hat for the likes of Ya Mama and Mad Flava, much of the record, like Weapon of Choice, lopes easily, in fact uneventfully, along.
There are too many drum loops banging away, too many borrowed voices saying nothing much, too little melody, too little organic music. It may be Fatboy, it may have its moments, but it’s still a DJ album. SOUNDBITES
Deftones: White Pony (Maverick) As if shameless genre-chasing of the “hey-kids-I’ve-got-an-Everything-But-the-Girl-CD!” variety and stepping out with Guy Ritchie weren’t enough, using her Maverick label to release albums that resemble a low-speed collision between a busload of manic depressives and a pigshed is final proof that Madonna has mutated from bandwagon driver to straggler. Deftones are unspeakably bad, not because of their constipated sluggishness or their abattoir unlistenability, but because, beneath the hateful, grubby topsoil of their third album, there’s nothing but void, nothing that hints beyond the lazy psychology of oblivion. It’s not because White Pony is radical that the cheerful, “orthodox” world will reject it; it’s because it’s crud. Tom Cox
Stephen Gately: New Beginning (A&M) Gately is first and foremost a member of Boyzone, and there’s no escaping their pernicious influence on his debut solo album. Despite kicking off boldly with the coming-out hit New Beginning, it soon goes squishy. It’s a game of two not-very-sexy halves, comprising ballads such as I Believe and disco workouts like the self-written Judgement Day, an anodyne motivational number. And Steve, tell us why a 24-year-old male of presumably sound mind has covered Art Garfunkel’s bunny ode, Bright Eyes? Still, he’s got a tremulous sweetness that’s unusual in this genre, and infinitely preferable to the corporate perfection of fellow Boy Ronan Keating. Caroline Sullivan