''Palookaville'' is the fourth studio album by English

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

producer

Fatboy Slim Norman Quentin Cook (born Quentin Leo Cook, 31 July 1963), also known as Fatboy Slim, is an English musician and DJ who helped popularise the big beat genre in the 1990s. His music makes extensive use of Sampling (music), samples from eclectic ...

. It was first released on 4 October 2004 in the United Kingdom by

Skint Records Skint Records is a Brighton and Hove based dance music record label owned by JC Reid, Tim Jeffery and Damian Harris. It was created as a sublabel of Loaded Records, also founded by Reid and Jeffery. Along with Wall of Sound, the label was a ...

and a day later in the United States by

Astralwerks Astralwerks (or Astralwerks Records) is an American record label primarily focused on electronic music that is now owned by Universal Music Group. Its material is distributed via Capitol Music Group in the United States. The label was founded in ...

. The album was nominated for the 2006

Grammy Award for Best Electronic/Dance Album The Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album is an award presented at the Grammy Awards — a ceremony that was established in 1958 — honor quality dance and electronica albums in any given year. The award was first presented at the 47th ...

. As of 2025, ''Palookaville'' is the last studio album Cook has released under the Fatboy Slim name. When asked in 2019 if he had any plans to make a new album under the alias, he responded "probably not", while further stating "If I ever got around to making another Fatboy Slim, album it'll probably be in a time when albums are completely redundant as a format".

Promotion

Football club Brighton and Hove Albion F.C. temporarily named their

Withdean Stadium Withdean Stadium is an athletics stadium in Withdean, a suburb of Brighton. It was constructed in 1930. It was the home track of Olympic athlete Steve Ovett. Between 1999 and 2011 it was the home ground of football team Brighton & Hove Albion ...

after the name of that album following their sponsorship deal with Skint Records."Fatboy calls the tune"
, '' The Argus'', 4 October 2004

Critical reception

''Palookaville'' was met with "mixed or average" reviews from critics. At

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, this release received an

average In colloquial, ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data. The type of average taken as most typically representative of a list of numbers is the arithmetic mean the sum of the numbers divided by ...

score of 53 based on 24 reviews. In a review for

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

, critic reviewer David Jeffries wrote: "''Palookaville'' could stand one more trimming pass, but it gives Cook's canon the needed depth. Now there's a Fatboy Slim record for that rainy day and one the long-haired freaky people can enjoy."

Track listing

Personnel

* Norman Cook - samples, keyboards, synthesizer, programming, bass * Simon Thornton - guitar, mixing, engineering *

Damon Albarn Damon Albarn (, ; born 23 March 1968) is an English musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He is best known as the frontman, main vocalist, and lyricist of the rock band Blur (band), Blur and the co-creator and primary musical con ...

- vocals on "Put It Back Together" *

Lateef the Truthspeaker Lateef Kenneth Daumont, better known by his stage name Lateef the Truthspeaker, or mononymously as Lateef, is an American hip hop artist from Oakland, California. He is a member of several hip hop groups such as Latyrx, Lateef and the Chief, a ...

- vocals on "Wonderful Night" and "The Journey" *

Justin Robertson Lionrock was a British big beat group, comprising record producer Justin Robertson, MC Buzz B, and producer, engineer, programmer and synthesist Roger Lyons. Lyons replaced recording engineer Mark Stagg in 1995. Their biggest chart success cam ...

- vocals, bass and guitar on "Push and Shove" * Sharon Woolf - additional vocals on "Put It Back Together" and "Push and Shove" *

Bootsy Collins William Earl "Bootsy" Collins (born October 26, 1951) is an American bass guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Rising to prominence with James Brown in the early 1970s before joining the Parliament-Funkadelic collective, Collins established himse ...

- vocals on "The Joker''" * Jonny Quality - vocals and guitar on "Long Way from Home"

Charts

Certifications

References

External links

* {{Authority control 2004 albums Astralwerks albums Fatboy Slim albums Skint Records albums