thestar.com

It's well-documented (and rehashed here) that the Floyd was fractured by the time The Wall was released. Keyboardist Rick Wright, whose inactivity brought the worst of [Roger Waters]' wrath, had all but been fired and was kept on only for the sake of the tour. [David Gilmour], meanwhile, was growing less interested in Waters' grandiose, self-absorbed ideas. And Waters himself had let his insecurities and childhood traumas run roughshod over the band's dynamics. By contrast, the next album, The Final Cut, should be considered an intensely personal Waters' masterpiece, not a Pink Floyd classic.

You've come a long way, indeed, baby. It's largely unknown over here, but Norman Cook (better known as Fatboy Slim) had a rather successful career before Praise You and The Rockafeller Skank made him a Madison Avenue's poster boy. He started as a member of the Housemartins (whose wonderful minor hit Happy Hour is now best remembered as the coda to Barenaked Ladies' Hello City), then dove headlong into the then-embryonic DJ scene in London under the moniker Beats International.

This Boutique mix disc is actually two years late; it's the first in a series but was jumped Stateside by the All Stars' inferior outing. Cook's hour-long rave, however, is a blast, shifting from an opening revamp of the '68 obscurity Apache to prime Jungle Brothers and Bassbin Twins to (what else?) The Rockafeller Skank. Its midsection, starting with Aldo Bender's Acid Enlightenment, may test the patience of the casual techno fan, but the resolute will be rewarded by the entire mind-altering experience.