Fatboy Slim to play big open-air gig in North East

Billed as THE music event of the summer, Fatboy Slim will take centre stage on Friday, July 29, at Times Square in Newcastle.

It kicks off a weekend of open-air gigs, with indie icons Ocean Colour Scene playing on July 30 and North East chart-toppers Maximo Park on July 31.

Fatboy Slim is the alter ego of acclaimed producer/DJ Norman Cook, whose hits include Right Here, Right Now, Praise You and Eat Sleep Rave Repeat.

He rose to fame in the 1980s as bassist with indie band The Housemartins, and adopted the Fatboy Slim moniker in 1996, enjoying major mainstream success with his own take on electronic dance music and spellbinding live shows.

The two-time Brit Award winner said: “To celebrate my birthday weekend I will be conducting a mass science experiment at the Centre For Life on Times Square - to explore the effects of collective euphoria and escapism.

“I chose the North East because in my previous experiments the people there seem to have a consistently high rate of abandonment and licentiousness when subjected to my music at a loud volume in an enclosed space.

“We are conducting this on Times Square, an outdoor environment, in case the levels are so high that the audience blows the roof off. Confidence is high that we will reach new highs in audience frenzy and exhilaration.”

These days, Cook’s show involves not just playing his own patented brand of “party acid house”, but a complex audio-visual production.

“I’m technically a video jockey now,” he said. “We write scripts for all the tunes, make films. In the past, I used to have to literally hold up the next record I was going to play to the guy who does my visuals, and he’d have to find the images to match it. And they were never synched.

"But now, because of the technology, no matter what speed I play at, even if I just chop quickly into it, the visuals are all synchronised. It’s a show.”

Event organiser Steve Davis of SSD Concerts said: “We're extremely excited to bring such a huge name in the music industry to the North East for this event.

"We feel we have the ultimate opening act for what we hope to be an annual event. There is no one better than Norman. He wants to perform here for a reason, which means a lot to us both as promoters and fans of his music.

“Fatboy Slim hasn't played in Newcastle for quite some time and he has never headlined an outdoor show here and potentially won’t again. We have kept the tickets affordable so the event is more accessible to everyone that wants to attend. This will definitely be the event of the summer in the North East.”

Tickets, priced £25, go on general sale on Friday, May 6, at 9am from www.seetickets.com.