rjd2 vs. Fatboy Slim

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Fatboy can change up his styles. Also he has funny videos. Rjd2 has only one style, and he's never quite gotten to "praise you" with it. But he doesn't have any brit-soulboy baggage so can hit up two-step swing to keep things bouncing and he's mercifully short on overrepeated vocal hooks. Also, every now and then he sounds like the Avalanches which is good but the gorgeous diva vocals never come bursting out, which is bad. Fatboy follows through on the divas, and also I can dance faster to him.

Also, Christopher Walken!

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 4 November 2002 18:52 (twenty-two years ago)

Three words: "funk", "soul", & "brother"

I'm gonna have to say, um...Amon Tobin.

― nickalicious, Monday, 4 November 2002 18:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Tobin's sort of fallen into "jazz shmazz, I wanna sound like Meat Beat Manifesto" mode as of late which has given sort of mixed results.

I'm probably going to pick Fatboy Slim merely for a larger discography (and that James Brown megamix he did in the late '80s under Norman Cook). But if RJD2's next album is as good as Dead Ringer and he starts getting a few more remixes under his belt it'll be a lot closer. Anyone hear "True Confessions" yet? DAMN.

― Nate Patrin (Nate Patrin), Monday, 4 November 2002 19:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Norman has been around for, well, ever, with any number of dancey projects before he even became Fatboy. RJ has one album, and it's much less populist in ambition. There may well be a basis for comparison someday, but just now it's like comparing strawberries and kumquats.

― bucky wunderlick (bucky), Monday, 4 November 2002 19:11 (twenty-two years ago)

bucky they are both fruits!

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 4 November 2002 19:44 (twenty-two years ago)

ahem. the strawberries and kumquats that is.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 4 November 2002 19:45 (twenty-two years ago)

True Confessions is hot.

― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 4 November 2002 20:45 (twenty-two years ago)

bucky's right tho - apples and oranges - why compare?

― blueski, Tuesday, 5 November 2002 01:30 (twenty-two years ago)

because one is better than the other. make up your mind damnit!

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 02:41 (twenty-two years ago)

ENOUGH! Taking Sides: apples vs. oranges

― Charlie (Charlie), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 03:37 (twenty-two years ago)

you hataz better wise up. of couse the two are worth comparing. i mean -- the whole breakbeat/soul sample thing is like *this* close and what happens if you start thinking about rjd2 as "big beat" -- does he succeed on those terms, does he fail, does fatboy really have more reverence for "soul" culture than he does?

these are questions worth asking and if you don't see that then you're a first class fucking punk.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 05:08 (twenty-two years ago)

norm has never turned out something as gentle as "i like yr def jux baby t" or whatever it's called. (even if it is just pete rock with the "poignancy" turned to +8.)

that said, rjd2 has not created a party rocker as good as "dub be good to me".

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 05:33 (twenty-two years ago)

I want to see Christopher Walken and El-P in a video together.

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 07:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Sterling to me its like comparing DJ Shadow and Groove Armada so i thought it was a dumb and pointless comparison, as i think these days the Fatboy is closer to GA (and Cook hardly plays breakbeat-based tracks these days) and RJD2's definitely more in the Shadow vein...just because Fatboy and RJD2 both sample old breaks you see that as a good enough reason to lump them together - what about David Holmes or Prefuse 73 or Automator or The AValanches who are all much more similar to RJD2...either way i rate them all and have no particaulr preference

― blueski, Tuesday, 5 November 2002 11:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Blueski, why is comparing DJ Shadow to Groove Armada a dumb and pointless comparison? Yeah, they do different things, but surely you have a preference for one or the other. The difference is the point here - RJD2 and Fatboy's uses of soul represent two totally different strands of electronic music reaching towards the same space (mediated by Moby perhaps?) so comparing their divergence is a really effective way to talk about the relative merits of the two strands.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 11:45 (twenty-two years ago)

thats fair enough, but the criticism of RJD2 initially appears to be he's not as good as Fatboy SLim because he doesnt do what Fatboy Slim does which i saw as daft reasoning - of course your preference for Fatboy SLim could just be based on that but this negates RJD2's own attributes and the advantages he does possess over Fatboy Slim e.g. i'm sure he's a better scratch DJ if not mixer, his newcomer status means we are not as adhered to his formula as we are with Cook who had become notoriously (and dentrimentally to an extent) formulaic with his remixes and production technique in general...and i guess you could say RJD2 represents an idea of underground in contrast to Fatboy Slim's mainstream status and now very public image - which is preferable to a lot of people for whatever reason

i just see the pros and cons in both and even though i've been aware of Norman COok for much longer and because he has a lengthy body of work that i'm generally into i would be inclined to say i prefer him but i still feel the comparison is not as valid or relevant as Tim and Sterling think it is - so who do you prefer out of DJ Shadow and Groove Armada and why? ;)

― blueski, Tuesday, 5 November 2002 12:24 (twenty-two years ago)

having said that about Fatboy's formulaic approach, over the last 15 years Cook has actually been one of the more diverse and eclectic producers in British dance music (the differences between 'Blame It On The Bassline', 'Dub Be Good To Me', 'Turn On Tune In Cop Out', 'Trippin On Sunshine', 'Magic Carpet Ride', 'Santa Cruz', 'Demons', 'Acid 8000' and his 'King Of Snake' remix being quite apparent)

― blueski, Tuesday, 5 November 2002 12:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Both Shadow and Groove Armada are obssessed with motifs - I get the feeling with both of them that they usually come up with the over-arching idea rather than the beat first (cf. Fatboy Slim and RJD2). GA's motifs are more fun than Shadow's, but they're not more fun than his are spinetinging - I prefer DJ Shadow because he's more willing to go all-out and OTT, particularly on the most recent album. Groove Armada get a nice groove going (see particularly "If Everybody Looked The Same") but then seem afraid to brock out with it - even "Superstylin" was much tamer than I expected from the advance press. "At The River" is a good example - I spend the whole song waiting for something, anything to *happen*, and I'm not just saying that because it's a chill-out track.

Pre-The Private Press I think I would have been more ambivalent.

(Sorry for hijacking your thread Sterling)

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 13:09 (twenty-two years ago)

I can't see even starting to think of RJ as bigbeat -- littlebeat, maybe? -- and I really can't see the comparison. Both make some beautiful music, but with totally different styles and moods... I can't see having much of a tender moment to Fatboy, nor can I really see RJ on the beach at Brighton, making however many tens of thousands of people dance.

― bucky wunderlick (bucky), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 15:55 (twenty-two years ago)

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