Cities and Memory - remixing the world

A game of table tennis recorded in the park high up in Belleville, looking over the rest of Paris on a Sunday morning. 

Recorded in Paris, France in February 2026 by Cities and Memory. 

Strange sounds of water and steam valves operating beneath a Victorian steam engine. 

Recorded in the maintenance access chamber beneath the Markfield Beam Engine, Tottenham, London by Paul Wheeler.

Yongnian Road and Shunchang Road are packed with “72 tenants” style lilong buildings, teeming with residents who speak softly to avoid stares. Street-level homes, often shops or card rooms, hum a bit louder. On summer nights, Shanghai uncles (yeshu), shirtless, sit on bamboo chairs, sipping cold beer, eating, and ga sanhu (chatting). 

In the 80s and 90s, with rising incomes, this lively scene lasted past midnight, marking the end of an era when voices drowned out traffic. During the recording, mostly locals remain; though distant words are faint, the Shanghai dialect’s cadence still rings clear.

Recorded in Shanghai by Digimonk.

"Paul Wheeler's original recording of the Beam Engine evoked a haunting sound of the steam-powered mechanics in an abandoned subway or perhaps a disused tube station on the London underground.

"Frozen in time, and haunted by the sounds and reflections of the past.
Mechanical remains still try to function in a lost existence, where they are no longer seen or heard.

"A theme which I find moving and provocative as a metaphor for elements of modern society, where echo chambers scream relevance, but do not exist in the physical world - and where people can exist and cease to exist in a void of invisibility.
I love films like Death Line and Quatermass And The Pit, and I am firmly stuck in the past."

Markfield beam engine reimagined by Dave Andrews / Zegazoid.

"Initially I was interested in this field recording because of the joy and fun the competition and ping-pong sounds evoke and the idea of creating a piece to match that energy. As I was working with the recording (changing speed/octaves), I was struck by how easily these fun sounds could be transformed into nightmarish sounds. This led me to combine the nightmare quality, the way sounds can be incorporated into dreams, the feeling of waking up on Sunday morning, and my love of horror movie soundtracks for “Cauchemar Coffee.” 

"This track manipulates and adds to the main field recording, tracing the time from being still in a dream state through waking up, making a coffee, and starting your Sunday morning.

"“Cauchemar Coffe” was created in VCVRack2 with additional field recordings including bird sounds from my porch, making my own Sunday coffee and waffles, bouncing a pickleball, and raindrops on/near a water-proof stereo contact mic. Playspeed, octaves, sample portions, and effects were changed during the track on the original field recording. Field recordings were combined with additional virtual eurorack modules and effects."

Table tennis in Paris reimagined by Stephanie E. Vasko.

"The recording of YongNian Rd. reminds me of living in China a number of years ago, and visiting Shanghai and walking down streets like this. What I love about this sample are its many layers - the traffic on the street, the bird chirping - likely in a bamboo cage -- but especially the lively sounds of people talking. Many streets are busy with folks enjoying each others' company - reflecting a common phrase for wishing someone well in China - that they walk slowly."

Yong Nian road, Shanghai reimagined by Wayne DeFehr.

"I dearly love Iceland - and on one of our many visits I was fortunate enough to go whale watching and see two magnificent humpback whales swimming right by our boat, their fins touching. It looked like a gesture of love, and I thought of all of our stories of selchies and other sea creatures - lost dreams of swimming with the sea mammals, and them choosing to walk with us. 

"We on the land, and they in the sea. This is my love song for those precious whales."

Humpback whale song off South Iceland reimagined by Rebecca Denniff.

"The piece is performed by Tara Milton (ex of 1990 famous bands 5.30 and The Nubiles) on Flamenco and acoustic guitar, and Giorgio Curcetrtri (played with Tara in The Nubiles and together they penned the classic ^Layabout^, indie Top Ten in 1994)) on Flamenco Guitar, Oud, Handclaps, Tambourine, Shakers, Bass and slide guitar.

"The music has been written by Tara Milton and arranged by Tara Miklton and Giorgioi Curcetti after listening to the Japanese percussion, recorded in Italy, and superimposed them on a dusk in the London area of Whitechapel."

Santarcangelo festival performance reimagined by Giorgio Curcetti and Tara Milton.

"I am a runner, so the sounds of people cheering runners instantly makes me smile. I initially thought I would use the a capella singing more than the cheering, but it would up being quite difficult to integrate any of the complex harmonies of that singing with any coherent musical ideas that I might introduce, so I would up focusing on the cheering. 

"Once I found the samples I wanted to use, I wrote some music to accompany those samples, but later dispensed with all that and created pitched down samples to use for the off-kilter sustained bed throughout most of the track. All the sounds in the song have been sourced from the field recording, with the exception of a couple of the drums and the bass. Most of the percussion was actually sourced from the recording as well. 

"I kind of doubt they are actually shouting "Give Me Your Toes", but that's what I hear, and it seems like a good name for a track about runners."

Singers cheering on Oslo marathon runners reimagined by Tristan Watkins.

"I was really struck by Ander Vinjar’s Heyr project, and the way he captures the sounds of the everyday and the ordinary at sites of historical trauma and violence. This piece works with one of the recordings from the café at Utøya. I treated it as a meditation on the café visitor’s questioning recognition of the bullet-holes still visible in the walls (Er det hull? - er det kulehull?"). 

"I'm interested in the relationship between what you can and can’t hear in these recordings - what’s implicit and explicit, buried or foregrounded."

Hegnen, Utoya reimagined by John Savarese.