Phat Time for Fatboy

So you think it’s easy being a world-renowned deejay? Well, just try hauling 8,000 records in a van in one day, as Norman Cook did one recent afternoon.

“I moved them from an apartment in London to a place near the beach, and I had to keep them all in alphabetical order,” says Cook, better known as Fatboy Slim, sipping a screwdriver in his dressing room at the Mayan Theatre shortly before his performance on Thursday. “I hope it’s the last time I do that!”

Cook’s cherished collection, which mostly consists of vintage soul and funk, holds the key to his current success as a music-maker. Cook’s talent lies not so much in scratching and manipulating vinyl as it does in using records to create crafty sound collages that blend song swatches, goofy sound bites and rumbling break-beats.

But unlike so many other electronic artists, Cook isn’t an underground culture snob cultivating an inscrutable persona. At a time when electronic music seems to have retreated from next big thing to small cult thing, Cook continues to position himself as an unrepentant populist who’s determined to get his music funneled into the mainstream.

“I’m glad that there are people out there like Radiohead and Massive Attack--those artists have a lot of depth and soul,” Cook says. “But I’m no good at that kind of music. I’ve got a sense of humor, and I like making party music. That’s just my personality.”

*

Cook’s party has been gaining momentum over the last two years. Fatboy Slim’s 1996 debut album, “Better Living Through Chemistry,” spread the gospel of big beat, a dance-music genre that emphasizes boom-bastic rhythms, and won over mall rats and skateboard punks alike. “Better Living” sold nearly 100,000 copies in the U.S., a substantial figure for an instrumental record. On his new album, “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby,” Cook has refined and expanded his unique brand of cut-and-paste whimsy, throwing healthy dollops of ska, ‘60s garage-rock and Southern soul music into his funky-freaky brew.

“People who grew up with rock can really get into what I’m doing,” says Cook, citing “Better Living’s” first single, “Going Out of My Head,” as an example. “That was really nothing more than Nirvana with break-beats. It gives people something to latch onto.”

Indeed, on stage at the Mayan a few minutes later, Cook gave the packed crowd plenty to latch onto, spinning a steady stream of irresistible grooves that were laced with teasing samples from artists such as Blur, Prince, Beastie Boys, James Brown and even his contemporaries the Chemical Brothers. Cook was relentlessly inventive, and the crowd ate it up.

“I’m not trying to fool anyone,” Cook says of his live act. “It’s not a live show in the traditional sense. I’m just up there trying to create a party atmosphere as best I can.”

*

Cook’s surprise summer hit “The Rockefeller Skank” is one of the deejay’s wackier constructs, combining a twangy surf guitar riff with a nonsensical vocal snippet from rapper Lord Finesse. Still, Cook is careful to avoid making novelty records, lest he wind up in the pop music dust heap along with Walter (“A Fifth of Beethoven”) Murphy and countless other one-hit phenoms.

“I’m conscious of not pandering just so I can have hits in America,” Cook says. “It’s nice to have success, but I wouldn’t want to forsake how I started, which was making music for me and my friends. It wouldn’t feel honest.”

Though he’s working in a youth-oriented genre, Cook, 34, is actually a veteran of the British music scene, with roots in both traditional guitar-rock and neo-soul. In the mid-’80s he played guitar in the Housemartins, an acerbic quintet whose socially conscious pop was modestly successful in England. “Being in the Housemartins was fun, but it wasn’t me at all,” Cook says.

After leaving the group in 1988, Cook, who began deejaying when he was 15, began to immerse himself in dance music. His group Beats International scored a British hit in 1990 with the ska-tinged “Dub Be Good to Me.” Then an ego-driven meltdown temporarily sidetracked his ambitions.

“I lost it,” Cook says. “My wife left me, and I went into a self-doubt spiral and stopped making records for a while.”

Eventually, Cook found salvation in the groove. He began spinning his old records and developed his current incarnation, which has made him one of electronic music’s most recognizable personalities.

“I’m just having a good time, and it rubs off on other people,” Cook says. “I mean, I’m really just a dorky English bloke.”