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"I AM a DJ, I am what I play," David Bowie once sang. "The DJ," write the authors of this book, "is an improvisational artist who has the world of recorded sound as his palette and the musical pleasure of a bunch of clubbers as his canvas."
In other words, they're not talking about "presenters": those radio "personalities" whose function it is to provide prattle between records selected by a producer, a committee or a computer. The radio disc jockey may well have been a conduit to bring music to the masses, but in the hands of the club DJ records cease to be discrete units of music. They become packages of ingredients to toss into the sonic brew.
The conventional DJ demonstrates his (as the authors point out, it's usually been "his") taste in records; the DJ-as-artist, his taste in bits of records. The logical result is the DJ's move into the studio, first as a remixer - remaking records to render them more dancefloor-friendly - and finally to displace the musician or producer...