In this episode we’re going to listen to the work of Aurélien Laville, aka 53cm, a musician from Le Havre, France. He chose to work on segment 18, corresponding to the city of Landsberg. We took the field recording in the city centre while sitting at a café. The water is nearby but can’t be heard, covered by the chit-chat and the clanking of the lively city centre, and by the sound of church bells. Little we knew that those bells were going to sound for 10 minutes, increasingly louder.

We’ve reached out to Aurélien via email asking him a few questions.

Let’s start with the icebreaker, tell us about yourself

My name is Aurélien Laville, aka 53cm. I have been making electronic music for over ten years. My work moves between techno, noise, and ambient. I use drum machines, samplers, and synthesisers. I often collaborate with artists for exhibitions and performances. They provide me with texts and images, which I translate into soundscapes.

You were handed a section of the river, with some material and geo-historical context, and returned to us with a musical composition. How did you make it work?

Before receiving segment 18, I explored the course of the river using the website of the Copernicus Programme. I expected to work directly with recordings of the Lech, but the assigned segment contained only sounds from the Altstadt of Landsberg am Lech.

This led me to consider the city as a sonic extension of the river. I extracted different elements from the recordings and transformed them (reverse playback, added effects, etc.) in order to compose an imagined narrative of this segment of the Lech.

I modified certain elements of the recordings by reversing them and adding reverb. I also added a synth drone that gradually transforms into an organ sequence in order to give the piece a more “sacred” character and to shape a coherent soundscape.

The title refers to the poem of the same name by Paul Verlaine.

The science behind this project raises ethical questions — about control, restoration, and coexistence with rivers. Did any of these ideas resonate with you, and how did that find its way into your music?

In my piece, the idea of coexistence naturally emerged. The Lech at Landsberg am Lech is not a completely free-flowing river; it is shaped by architecture — the steps, the central bridge.

The river was first imagined as a continuous drone, then gradually transformed into organ notes.

The drone represents a stable flow (natural, organic).

The organ represents a flow structured by the city (human).

The piece creates a dialogue between human activity and natural movement. The city and the river become inseparable.

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Flow is a project by Martina Cecchetto, curated by Riccardo Fumagalli, with the scientific contribution of Florian Betz.

In collaboration with Cities & Memory, University of Padua (Italy), University of Würzburg (Germany).

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