You wouldn't think that a hair salon or Toni Morrison or Flannery O'Connor would have much to do with turntablism. The truth is, they don't...but events can sometimes conspire to smash random thoughts together.

A couple of nights ago I was sitting in one of the free chairs at our local hair salon, waiting for TheWife™ to be finished with her pre-vacation do. I was supposed to meet her there when she was done so that we could deal with yet another pre-vacation chore, getting a tiny repair done on the Jeep (You know the kind. It involves the replacement of a 79-cent part and will undoubtedly cost $150). Somehow, I managed to get there very early, so my only choice was to find some reading material and make myself comfortable.

Not wanting to be given an endless ration of grief for picking the "most guy" magazine on the rack (which would have been an Ikea catalog...not even really sure that's very "guy" at all), I selected the summer reading issue of Oprah's magazine "O".

The very first article my thumb stopped at was an essay by Toni Morrison about how she learned the "art of reading." Morrison drew an interesting parallel between her childhood love of radio and her fascination with the printed word—that both forms of media require the consumer of ideas to provide some of their own details, making the story seem that much more rich.

Now of course this is only marginally related to turntablism. What struck me about Morrison's reading concept was that it reminded me of how some of the characters in the documentary Scratch thought of what they did. If you haven't seen this film, it deals with the roots of Hip Hop and the progression of turntablism. The key seemed to be the re-imagining of music. Not just samples of one tune yanked from one context to another. No, the players put their turntables through some impressive paces, coaxing out some pretty freakish sounds.

Cut Chemist takes these ideas and produces what can only be described as danceable art.

Armed with few guest musicians, an armload of samples, and a whole pile of ideas, Cut Chemist (Lucas MacFadden) just brings it. From the skankalicious two-step of the opening "Motivational Speaker" (funniest sample: "The DJ of the future is going to be a respected member of the community"), to the stomping "(My 1st) Big Break", to the spacey beat workout of "Metrorail Thru Space", this record never lets up.

While MacFadden plays with a style quite a bit less dense than, say, Public Enemy's Bomb Squad, the resultant mash of ideas is no less interesting. "Spoon", built on top of a short ascending chord sequence, adds some guitar and bass to produce a sort of soul/jazz meditation. A similar treatment works with "2266 Cambridge", with keyboards lifting a suite of samples that give the impression of drive through a neighborhood...maybe not Bed Stuy though.

My favorite track on The Audience's Listening is without a doubt "The Garden". Put together around an Astrud Gilberto vocal from "Berimbou", the slinky tune of the past is gently pulled right into 2006. The layers and layers of percussion, guitar, and berimbau (a Brazilian stringed instrument) perfectly illustrate the "big ears" of Cut Chemist. The music and its construction serve to bring Gilberto's lovely vocal into extremely sharp relief. Great stuff.

Flannery O'Connor, hair salon, Toni Morrison, turntablism. Different for sure....but not unrelated.