Further proof that the hip-hop world moves too goddamned fast for us rockists: just when we'd gotten the whole "is DJing a legitimate art form" debate through our thick-as-Led skulls, along came Kanye, Danger Mouse, and the Neptunes, and they went and turned it into a producer's medium.

Now, aspiring Timbalands can even create reputable music on their own home computer - aren't those the things Jack White hates? - with just a vast MP3 collection, a decent sampling program and a good feel for rhythm as the necessary prerequisites. Those still unconvinced that it takes talent to spin, listen well: the age of the armless DJ is finally upon us. Get with it or get out of the way.

Unless, of course, your name is Lucas Macfadden, in which case my advice is to guard your arms like the precious endangered species that they are. Macfadden, better known as Cut Chemist, is perhaps most renowned as one of the two DJs (the live kind, with turntables) behind Jurassic 5, a band whose fading critical prestige nevertheless can't obscure the fact that their defiantly analogue samplescapes are among the most progressive in recent memory. But now, freed of his association with that group (he won't be appearing on their forthcoming third release), Cut Chemist is putting out a solo album, his first "proper" one after more than 10 years of live performances, guest spots, remixes, and limited releases. And part of me - the part that really, really hates ProTools - wanted it to be a tour de force, a definitive statement that would fly in the face of every act of digitalized nob-tweaking 21st-century bloggers and philistines have had the nerve to dub "progress."

Needless to say, The Audience's Listening isn't quite that album; it's humbler than that, and in a way, that's a good thing. Manual and digital turntablism aren't really diametrically opposed, after all, and my love for Kanye and Danger Mouse is well-known, despite those two artists' tendencies toward "production" rather than classic sampling. As for the idea of the live DJ as a dying art, one need only look around at one's local clubs to see that the form is alive and well; you just won't find it scale the masterful heights of a Terminator X, a DJ Shadow or, yes, a Cut Chemist on the Top 40 anytime soon. So without the sense of melodramatic urgency, without the "Us vs. Them" approach I so naively invoked, what is The Audience's Listening after all?