Deserter’s Songs
Arts & Culture, Deserter's Songs, New in Ceasefire - Saturday, July 2, 2011 9:00 - 0 Comments
Deserter’s Songs I Hear That Train A-Comin’
"There's a long history of trains in popular music. They've represented freedom, inspired dances, carried loved ones away and heralded utopian futures." Dave Bell offers a selection of the different ways in which the sounds of trains have been used in music and considers what this might be able to tell us about the way we engage with sound and each other.
Deserter's Songs, Music & Dance, New in Ceasefire - Saturday, November 20, 2010 10:23 - 3 Comments
Deserter’s Songs The Apocalyptic Landscapes of Godspeed You! Black Emepror
Next month sees the much anticipated return of Godspeed You! Black Emperor- one of the most vital and thrilling bands of late nineties and early naughties. In this week's Deserter's Songs music column, David Bell explains why he finds their music so hauntingly fascinating.
Deserter's Songs, New in Ceasefire - Saturday, November 13, 2010 20:43 - 4 Comments
Deserter’s Songs Free Music: A Price Worth Paying?
Should music be free? Should anyone have a right to listen to any music they like? Is giving away music for free a guarantor of cultural stagnation and death both for artists and listeners? David Bell takes a look at the arguments.
Deserter's Songs, Music & Dance, New in Ceasefire - Saturday, October 30, 2010 7:44 - 1 Comment
Deserter’s Songs A Funny Bird That Never Lands
In this week's Deserter's Songs column, David Bell revisits the album which gave his column its name: Mercury Rev's 1998 masterpiece 'Deserter's Songs', and explains how knowing the album for nine years has been like the "wonderful early stage of a relationship".
Deserter's Songs, New in Ceasefire - Saturday, October 23, 2010 17:59 - 0 Comments
Deserter’s Songs – Bye Bye Binaries (Music and Żal)
In this week's Deserter's Songs column, David Bell considers the way in which music can cut across binary distinctions, and considers a Polish term which may help us understand the complex, contradictory emotions that music can throw up.
Deserter's Songs, Music & Dance, New in Ceasefire - Saturday, October 16, 2010 8:19 - 9 Comments
Deserter’s Songs: The shape of education to come?
In this week's Deserter's Songs column on music and politics, David Bell considers the relevance of free improvisation for a 'new way of making and living education'. In so doing, he examines the resonances between the practice of free improvisation and what is commonly termed 'critical pedagogy'.The similarities, he contends, are startling.
Deserter's Songs, New in Ceasefire - Saturday, October 9, 2010 1:01 - 2 Comments
Deserter’s Songs – The Shape of Utopia to Come
In this week's Deserter's Songs column, David Bell looks at the rich possibilities of free improvisation, and how it allows musicians 'to be fully a part of the crowd and at the same time completely removed from it'. At its best, Bell argues, improvisation can unleash stunning displays of creative power.
Arts & Culture, Columns, Deserter's Songs - Saturday, September 25, 2010 0:00 - 2 Comments
Deserter’s Songs – Hang on to Each Other: The Critical Dystopianism of Silver Mt.Zion
In this week's Deserter's Songs column, Dave Bell revisits critical dystopia through the music of the Canadian band Silver Mt.Zion, which expresses a juxtaposition of horror and hope better than any other he knows. Their pained, sorrowful and always beautiful music invites the listener to meditate on the horrors of US imperialism; the ineptness of Canadian politicians and the general “shit and dismay” of a world in which neoliberal capitalism has run amok.
Arts & Culture, Columns, Deserter's Songs, Features, Music & Dance - Saturday, September 18, 2010 17:46 - 6 Comments
Deserter’s Songs – Looking Backwards: In Defence of Nostalgia
When Dave Bell skims his ipod, the most common thing he looks out for is "the feeling of nostalgia". In this week's Deserter's Songs music column, he revisits the enduring spell of looking backwards. Through a tour of musical gems he shows us how "the past and the radical future may not be so hostile to one another" after all.
Arts & Culture, Deserter's Songs, Music & Dance - Friday, September 10, 2010 22:08 - 5 Comments
Deserter’s Songs: A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens
In the first of a new series of columns on music, 'Deserter's Songs', Dave Bell discusses his fascination with what, he admits, is a "very boring" piece of music: Talking Heads' 'Heaven'.
This is a song, Bell argues, that epitomises "pop as Samuel Beckett might write it: tedious, beautiful and desperate".
