Cities and Memory - remixing the world

A metro journey on line 10 to Jussieu, with the sounds of closing and opening doors, announcement, passengers chatting and the rumble rails. 

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

|A tradition apparently dating back 400 years, the Palm Sunday procession at Christchurch College, Oxford University. A donkey (called Monty!) leads a procession of worshippers holding palm leaves and crosses from the gardens of the college, along a main street, around the college quadrangle and into the chapel for a service. 

Around 100 worshippers take part, singing a hymn as they proceed, accompanied by the college choir and a small brass band. The donkey seems quite calm and nonplussed by the whole affair. This is an Oxford tradition going back for many, many years - and this is the first time I've managed to catch it and record the sounds. 

Recorded in March 2026 by Cities and Memory. 

As the first faint fingers of light begin to break the night, the first song calls out into the magic of the dawn. 

In the cool clear air when the day still belongs to them alone, the songbirds with their ancient wisdom use the magical hours when their beautiful songs can travel clearly & furthest across the skies. 

They sing to celebrate their survival, greeting each day with joy. They send a message of hope & valour. 

A stunning and moving soundscape immersing you in a beautiful, multi-layered tapestry of sound. 

The dawn choruses and evensong are just beautiful. 

Listening to the songs intertwined of the songbirds, robins, song thrushes, blackbirds, and blackcaps, later joined by layers of the tit family and finches. With a shimmering overlay of the tiny bell sounds of the long tailed tits, goldcrests and firecrests to the deeper tones of the collared doves and wood pigeons. 

I always love to rise & celebrate their survival with them. 

Recorded in ancient parkland on the coastal slopes that run down to the sea. 

Recorded by Julie Woolmore.

On cold days at noon, in the woods of Vukomeričke Gorice near Sisak in Croatia, silence usually prevails because the morning birdsong has already died down and the evening song has not yet begun. But with the rise in temperature, the snow begins to melt, creating streams in otherwise dry beds. The murmur of water can be heard from far away. This is a close-up recording of three such little streams.

Recorded by Grigor Coric. 

"The source made me think of German metro-tunnels, so I wanted to include footsteps, which THEN put me in mind of the poem The Panther by Rainer Maria Rilke. The poem is (amongst other things) about the impotent power of the caged big cat, forlorn, empty-hearted, broken, pacing but going nowhere. I'm reading the poem in my faltering German! 

"For the second half of the piece, I wanted to highlight the energy and momentum of such a magnificent beast, so I cut two, 4-bar sections of didgeridoo from the field recording, tuned them and got them into the right tempo, and set those to a pulse to echo the heartbeat of the cat."

Didgeridoo busker in Hannover reimagined by Kevin O'Connor.

"‘At The Same’ uses a field recording of a journey on the Paris Metro. I wanted to imagine many different journeys happening at the same time. The entire file was placed in a software that can randomly scan an entire file and play back snippets from different parts, I did this using Reaktor software. This randomly scanned audio snippets were recorded for 6 minutes in Logic.

"On listening back, I noticed that there were occasional sustained sounds - perhaps brakes on the trains - and wanted to foreground those sounds so I used 4 different freeze plugins to capture and elongate the sounds.

"Further audio editing was done, such reversing some small sections and copying and pasting some small snippets to help with the structure.

"Only sounds were used from the original field recording apart from the processing as described above."

Paris metro line 10 reimagined by Phil Durrant.

"The field recording was of a Palm Sunday procession and sermon. I used this inspiration to imagine Jesus entering Jerusalem to praise an adoration. The haunting melody and jarring counter melody represents his knowledge and inevitability of what was to come. I used Ableton Live."

Palm Sunday at Christchurch College, Oxford reimagined by Lynn Findlay.

"I love the dawn and dusk chorus. The birds sound so joyous to me. The music is an attempt to meet and match that joyousness - drawing inspiration from what I have heard in some of the guitar playing of South Africa. While recording, a song thrush turned up in my garden to add its own birdsong solo to the piece!"

Lyme Regis dawn chorus, England reimagined by Gareth Williams.

"I love this field recording - its evocation of place and water and also the complexity of the sounds the water makes. If I had the skills I would extract some of the tones and make a three-voiced fugue out of them; as it is I've tried to respond to the different streams with the human sounds they suggest, celebrating the affinities between people and wild water in a version of sonata form. 

Stream in Gradec, Croatia reimagined by Maria Margaronis.

"The recording immediately jumped out at me with its' chattering insects, bees and voices, and a little noise. 

"I wanted to draw tones from the buzzing and clicks to make something that felt like you were exploring the world through resonance and reflection.

"I did a little live modular jamming to explore the material first - which led to this idea of using the bees buzzing as a gateway into this alternative world and back again:
https://www.youtube.com/live/LmFAG4Ry708

"It's like you just got lost for a moment, briefly seeing the world a different way."

Insect hotel in Goettingen reimagined by Warren Anthony.