Cities and Memory - remixing the world

An interview with Cities and Memory creator Stuart Fowkes on BBC World Service's Weekend programme, broadcast on 22 September 2024. The interview discusses the project and its importance in offering a different perspective in the portrayal of migration, as well as sound samples from the Mediterranean, Mexico and Slovenia.  

While most mountain excursions pass off without a hitch, every year there are accidents in every mountain range, and the Dolomites is no exception. This composition was spurred by hearing that someone had unfortunately fallen to their death on the same mountain we had been hiking on just the previous day. 

The composition begins and ends brightly, representing a typical day on the mountain, but the central section is overlaid with news reports of recent incidents in the mountains beneath a bed of strings, serving as a reminder to anyone visiting the mountains to exercise extreme caution and remember that accidents can happen, tragically, to even the most experienced climbers and hikers. Respect the mountain. 

Mountain stream at Monte Civetta reimagined by Cities and Memory. 

A mountain stream close to Torre Trieste, part of the Monte Civetta group in the Dolomites, Italy. Recorded on a long hike around the complete circuit of Monte Civetta, at 8.30am in the still-fresh morning air at the beginning of a hot August day. 

Mountain soundscapes are surprisingly silent, with occasional bird or animal calls and a slight wind the other main sounds to be heard other than the gentle trickling of water down the mountainside.

Recorded by Cities and Memory. 

"Rain at night in big cities hits differently. Against the backdrop of neon lights, throbbing traffic and pulsating crowds of people, the steady beat of rain adds a deep cinematic quality to a city. 

"This sound of night rain in Beijing has been reimagined with the soundtrack of a 1980s thriller/mystery in mind, as perhaps an intrepid detective pulls his collar up to face the rain and head out onto the streets in his dogged pursuit of justice. The piece is intended to be reminiscent of underscoring, perhaps in an early scene-setting fragment of this hard-boiled (imaginary) movie."

Night rain in Beijing reimagined by Cities and Memory. 

It's raining on the summer night of 24 July, 2024. Raindrops falling on the ground present the real natural sound of a summer night.

Recorded by Denver Wang. 

The sounds of an open fire cooking food are very gradually transformed into a sweeping ambient soundscape in this composition, representing the slow speed at which a few scraps of kindling and some logs becomes a open camp fire. The slow transformation of matter into flames and ash. 

Every sound in the composition apart from the guitars is derived from the original field recording, as convolution reverbs, delays and resonators are gradually applied to the sound, causing it to evolve into an ambient sweep.

The title comes from Emily Dickinson's poem:

You cannot put a Fire out—

A Thing that can ignite

Can go, itself, without a Fan—

Upon the slowest Night—

You cannot fold a Flood—

And put it in a Drawer—

Because the Winds would find it out—

And tell your Cedar Floor—

Open fire cooking reimagined by Cities and Memory. 

Cooking potatoes wrapped in foil, and sausage in a pan on an open wood fire while camping in the Brecon Beacons national park in Wales. In this recording you can clearly hear the fire flickering and licking the wood while the food cooks. 

Recorded by Cities and Memory, summer 2024.

Early morning English village ambience takes inspiration from Tomas Transtromer's wonderful poem "The Half-Finished Heaven", as we attempt to translate these words into a reimagination of the source sound that evokes some of the simple joy and complex melancholy of a bright summer morning:

Despondency breaks off its course.

Anguish breaks off its course.

The vulture breaks off its flight.

The eager light streams out,

even the ghosts take a draught.

And our paintings see daylight,

our red beasts of the ice-age studios.

Everything begins to look around.

We walk in the sun in hundreds.

Each man is a half-open door

leading to a room for everyone.

The endless ground under us.

The water is shining among the trees.

The lake is a window into the earth.

An early morning recording next to a quiet stream in Gittisham village, England. 

Birds are singing all around us as the stream rushes past, glistening in the June sunlight. 

Recorded by Cities and Memory. 

"I wanted to compose something as a clarion call for cities across the world in an Olympic year, so this was perfect. Using the sound of the traditional Chinese instrument which was then stretched and chopped up into a 'siren' sound, which was then turned into a loop on which the whole track was based.

"The sound was then stretched and modified using granular synth plugins to act as a basis for the main melody sounds. This inspired a woozy analogue-style piece with added guitars and slightly trip-hop beats."

Chinese violin in Boston reimagined by Graeme Worsfold.