Songshifting

"'Songshifting: Requiem For Stage Diver & Bass Guitar' is a work of urgent and fascinating beauty, sparking with frenetic energy. I was lost in Bell's colourful Pynchon-meets-cyberpunk dystopia from the first page. A real joy." Paul M.M. Cooper, 'River of Ink' The Dirty Birds, Poodlefaker, Jackass Morwong, Bizarre Avocado Crimewave and Cheeto Jesus are bands touring with a live show called Dangerous Mixture. The Dirty Birds' singer Sam Ratcliff devotes much of her band's set to stage-diving into the punters. One night, at the club Everything That Ever Was, she's returned unconscious to the stage and dies of apparent asphyxiation. Unemployed music journo Rarity Dean sets out to investigate her death. Dean wrote for music paper the 'Grid' before being fired for criticising the brutal regime of the mysterious impresario following a live event at which bands like Scrooch, the Dust Bunnies and the Dirty Birds made a stand against the state's ban on recorded music. As Dean attempts to unearth the truth she begins to question everything she once considered sacred. She's soon on the trail of Teasel Fuller, a former security man with a violent past. But can this odd crime really be as simple as that? Other clues appear to suggest a grassroots rebellion is afoot - one systematic enough to unite punters and street gangs to rise against the impresario. The sequel to 'Songshifting' and the second book in the 'Songshifting' trilogy. "Music that's gone in the moment, that's what the impresario wanted music to be in its entirety: a moment that could be covertly manipulated, dosed up with something mind-altering. Not an emotionally variable moment the impresario had no control over, no stake in, not a moment that could be replayed in secret by punters with effects unknown. The impresario gave the insidious impression that music was just entertainment, which was precisely why it was our best means of resistance."