A quiet and nice village besides Yellow River at Lanzhou City. QinQiang opera from the loud speaker in the village and this is very local sound. Happy birds are busy on working. What a wonderful soundscape.

Recorded by Digimonk.

IMAGE: Sigismund von Dobschütz, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

"'In Passage' was inspired by the field recording “Boat engines roar, Loch Coruisk” by Cities and Memory. I love this field recording of a tourist boat and wanted to enhance it with additional recordings from my library, including boat and shoreline field recordings, a contact microphone recording of a metal park gate, and sonic excerpts of other forms of travel: train, horse carriage and helicopter. 

"The original field recording was edited into three parts, linked together and supported by my recordings."

Isle of Skye ferry trip reimagined by Edward Ruchalski.

"I put the original recording through a bit of distortion, listened to it for a while, and then went over it with some text from my phone notes that felt like it fitted the original sounds. My practice involves extended vocal techniques, I tried to treat the original recording as a collaborator in the same space as me to some extent."

Lanzhou City soundscape reimagined by Yol.

IMAGE: Sigismund von Dobschütz, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

"This six-minute composition combines the Isle of Skye Coral Beach recording with my own field recordings of water and hands passing through shells of an invasive species, from Lake Michigan at Europe Bay (in Northern Wisconsin) near where I grew up. I've been developing several compositions about waves, and movements across geographies - the Isle of Skye beach recording was quite subtle and rhythmic. 

"I paired these field recordings with overdriven, distorted melodics granular sampling of the recordings too, that remind, perhaps, of distant engines of seafaring vessels - a sonic memory-music of two huge bodies of water and shorelines."

Wave on Coral Beach, Skye reimagined by Gregory Scheckler.

"I've never been to the Dolomites before, but a close friend was recently there. He showed me his photos of the mountain range and told me about the locals and hikers he met along the trails and in the backcountry. Seems amazing. His stories supplemented the original field recording in a way that enabled me to start working on the music. 

"I knew I wanted to use an acoustic guitar as a key driving element for the feeling I was going for. I also knew that I would keep the original field recording unadulterated to provide more realistic context."

Birdsong and insects in the Dolomites reimagined by Eulipion Corps.

Taking a break next in a pasture on a hike in the Dolomites, while we admire the view we can hear birdsong in the trees surrounding us and the gentle buzz of insects.

Recorded by Cities and Memory, July 2025. 

"My first ever autumn was in Berlin and I also worked for a year in German train stations, so this field recording has an emotional weight for me. The title refers to unused train stations that were closed due to the division of the city during the Cold War. 

"It means 'Ghost Stations' in German. For me, the memories of those train stations are like ghosts that haunt me during melancholic and nostalgic hours; this is what I try to capture in the piece through the lens of who I am now."

Berlin Hauptbahnhof reimagined by 8110118.

A walkthrough of Berlin's main station, with announcements drenched in the huge reverb of the station hall, then the classic sounds of trolley bags, escalators, passengers as we explore this vast station and make our way underground to the U-bahn. 

Recorded in Berlin by Cities and Memory, September 2025. 

"A captivating field recording of fog machines in an outdoor setting was fed into a number of granular synth engines. This resulted in crackles, reverb shadow and drift. Different colours and movement ( fog drift) in the reimagined track emerged. 

"I built and recorded a number of different passages settling on a drifting, arpeggiated loop which allowed the field recording to move in and out of focus. Layered and distressed the track finally was completed."

Fog installation in the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin reimagined by Andy Billington. 

A remarkable fog installation in the sculpture garden of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, by Fujiko Nakaya. This site-specific installation activates once per hour, and fills the garden with vaporous fog, playing with the architecture of Mies van der Rohe. Fog formations emerge from different sides of the garden, blending with the trees and permanent sculptures, before slowly dissolving into the sky. 

The moving fog appears at various densities, at times at a nearly tangible volume, at others as a translucent veil. And it's an interesting sonic experience too - and fascinating to be the only person there focusing on the sounds, instead of the remarkable sights. 

Recorded by Cities and Memory.