The author is an opera critic and music fan who, in this book, explores the advent of post modernism in pop, suggesting a whole range of parallels between pop today and "high art" earlier this century. Central to this story is an musical instrument called the "sampler" which uses existing recordings and original stuff to make a new patchwork of sound. Beginning in the 1980s as an unappreciated oddity, the sampler started a moribund music scene through the work of "The KLF" and "Pump Up the Volume". This book describes the practice and reprecussions of sampling, and traces the fascinating history of the pop producer.