Cut Chemist (aka Lucas MacFadden) is one of the most sophisticated solo turntablist. It’s not by accident that his first full-length album, labeled Warner and including a Apple iPod nano advertisement recently featured theme, is called ‘Audience is listening’. Despite this apparently mainstream profile, he’s also one of most famous and respected hip hop Djs. And if video scratching is becoming a sort of mandatory outcome for turntablist then Cut Chemist has found his own way to embody this trend. His live at the El Rey in Los Angeles was a ‘first time ever’ on-stage video scratch experiment involving video of the audience.

During the encore Cut grabbed a digital camera, pointed to the audience, then proceeded to scratch the obtained live video footage. The video shots were manipulated two minutes after recording, perfectly in synch with the music rhythm. The audience is not barely listening anymore, appearing on stage in the form of images on the big screens behind the Vj, but it starts to act and behave like a protagonist. Is the Vj a director then? As far as the performance allows it, he probably then really is a director, being in control of time through the rewinding and fast-forwarding processes. However on the top of performance there’s the improvisation element, and scratching live video almost in real time is an act of pure and spontaneous creativity.” - Valentina Culatti, Neural.

Cut Chemist LIVE @ The Sound Garden pt 1