FURTHER Sound art projects by MiE Fielding

  'The Closest Thing to Heaven' is a unique photographic record of the Newcastle music scene in the 1970s and 80s. Featuring a mixture of professional and amateur photos capturing the energy and DIY ethos of the bands and artists that played to the city’s loyal crowds.  Despite the many social upheavals and economic recession in Britain during this period, there were still people keen to go out any night of the week. The atmosphere of this scene is captured by many of the shots taken from within the crowd of local bands such as Prefab Sprout, The Kane Gang and Arthur 2 Stroke. As well as the music, this book features some of the important venues, labels, art and people that were a major part of Newcastle’s music culture at this time. Covering various genres including post punk and electronic music, as well as more traditional rock, this photo book will bring back memories of a carefree youth that for some was ‘The Closest Thing to Heaven'. 

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This composition consists of a field recording made at Burchardi church in Halberstadt (Germany) in July 2024 and is the most recent note from the John Cage ORGAN2/ASLSP project.

As with Cage's instruction for the original ASLSP , I have produced eight interjecting pieces here with one ommited and another repeated,based upon Cage's prepared piano, although each interjection is in fact the original field recording manipulated.

I'm aiming to portray my impression of this beautiful City with the juxtaposition of Halberstadt's terrible history, much of it still visible today.

Halberstadt's synagogue was ransacked and burned in the 9 November 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom. The synagogue's Torah scrolls were removed and burned in the street. On 18 November 1938, the Nazi's ordered the demolition of the synagogue and required the Jewish community to pay the cost of the work.

Only 450 of 1600 timber framed houses survive in the city centre.In April 1945, US forces approached Halberstadt as they attacked the remaining Nazi troops in the Harz pocket. The US dropped leaflets instructing Halberstadt's Nazi ruler to fly a white flag on the town hall as a token of surrender.He refused, and on 8 April 1945, the US 8th Air Force, dropped 595 tons of bombs, killing 2,500 people and rendering most of the old town into some 1.5 million cubic meters of rubble.Find out more here

Sound constructed from field recordings at two churches.Cartmel Priory in the Lake District UK and St. Catherine of Alexandria Krakow Poland.At this latter location there is the resonating sound of coins being inserted into a metal box in order for candles to be purchased.They are then lit, perhaps in memory of a loved one.

Poetry by MiE Fielding. Mixed for headphones.Find out more here

 An old man of failing health
surveys a box of motorbike parts
and remembers days when he didn't ache

Ill health forces sale

He now won't and never would have got the time

Ill health forces sale

His life in the box lies incomplete
As the doctor says It's not good news

From his advert gleefully answered by a younger bloke
The box of rusting parts is bought
In this box there lies HIS youth
A chance to apply a break on time

Now ten years pass and alas the box of parts still lie

A young man puts out an ad
"My dad never got the time"

An old man calls
" I'll take the lot and roll back the years"

But the time never came as once again

Ill health forces sale