The New Yorker’s Sasha Frere-Jones has written a story examining the use of laptops in live performance, where he talks with Battles and Girl Talk about each group’s experience with computers onstage.

Last December, a friend and I went to a release party for Mary J. Blige’s “Growing Pains” album. Near huge screens showing Blige videos, a d.j. was playing records on two turntables. The d.j.’s eyes, however, were trained on an Apple MacBook on a shelf above them. As a succession of Blige songs faded from one into the next, the d.j. never changed the records. My friend asked, “Is there a new Mary medley I don’t know about?”

The answer was no. The d.j., like many today, was using a program called Serato Scratch Live, which uses a turntable as a knob or a switch. Signals from a special Serato record being manipulated are fed into a box connected to a laptop. Serato translates the resulting signals, allowing the d.j. to cue and cross-fade digital audio files with the turntables. Why use a turntable at all? It’s still an efficient, familiar interface that, for blending songs, works better than a mouse. It’s also a visual indication that the d.j. is doing something with, and to, the music being heard.

Frere-Jones seems slightly disconcerted that artists could make the entire song on the laptop months in advance and just play a mix without changing anything at the live performance, but it’s not really all that different than bands using backing tapes, it’s just more reliable.

Frere-Jones also presents Girl Talk as the consummate user of the onstage laptop, and its hard not to, considering he literally makes the song as he’s performing.

For the full story, click here.