Better Living Through Chemistry

Better Living Through Chemistry catches Norman Cook before the ubiquity. 'Everybody Needs a 303' sits inside a debut still discovering what big beat could be, full of ideas that feel tossed off before they hardened into trademarks. You can hear the formula before it became a formula. The bigger records came later, but everything that made them work is already here.

Norman Cook assembling chart music from second-hand vinyl in a bedroom, with the pop instincts of someone who had already been in two successful bands. The founding document, and considerably more inventive than the career that followed it suggests.