Cities and Memory - remixing the world

"We all have experiences of storms to a greater or lesser extent. When I first heard the recording of the storm in the Moroccan Agafay Desert, I started thinking about the times I had been in a storm. From dramatic storms across central Australia, monsoons in South-east Asia or lightning storms across the sea at my home of Portobello, Edinburgh. However, I kept coming back to the storms I experienced as a young child growing up in Derby. I have vivid memories of getting headaches just before a storm came and then my sisters and I changing into our swimming costumes as the storm hit so we could run around the garden in the rain.

"To put it simply, I wanted ‘Children of the Storm’ to reflect my memory of these times, getting excited by the thunder and lightning, as first the wind would blow covering us with leaves and dirt and then dancing under the trees in the pouring rain getting soaked to the bone!

"The field recording runs throughout the whole song emphasising the excitement and anticipation we felt as the thunder, lightning and rain came."

Agafay desert storm reimagined by Simon Holmes. 

This is a field recording of a storm in the Agafay desert in Morocco. Listen to the sounds of the rain pitter pattering and the loud frightening thunder rumble, accompanied by birds tweeting in the background. 

Recorded by Jake Edwards. 

"What ultimately happened to flight KL1760 Bremen-Paris...?

"You hear the flight announcement at the airport, but things quickly spiral out of control. You also hear a reworking of the sound in the Musique Concrete style. A reporter's voice covering an attack in Paris, cinematic sound, and music building to a climax. A lingering Big Bang strikes the listener deep in the ears.

"The whole piece was composed in "old tape style" using a few microphones, a homemade oscillator bank, a piezo soundbox, a trumpet, and a violin.

"Mixed and remastered in the box in Audacity and Fluss."

Bremen airport soundscape reimagined by La Chambre Sonore.

Binaural recording of ambience in a mostly quiet terminal at Bremen Airport Hans Koschnick, with frequent announcements in both German and English. 

Recorded by Cities and Memory. 

This recording is from the beginning of 2025. I made the recording thru my open window, at the place I'm staying in Berlin (Kreuzberg neighbourhood). There are many church bells in this neighborhood. It's very distinctive to hear the bells in this area.

Recorded by Kathleen Judge. 

"I created this piece using my Agricultural Terrains compositional strategy for granular synthesis. It seemed appropriate as the bells encouraged me to reflect on the historical and agricultural connections created through German settlement and its influence on South Australian viticulture. The work explores the distance between places, time and memory itself."

Bells in Kreuzberg, Berlin reimagined by Alan Cook.

"The recording of the Sufi flute at Istanbul Airport immediately brought back vivid memories of the city, which I deeply love. The Sufi melody carries that magical and mystical aura that seems to permeate Istanbul in every corner and atmosphere, an air filled with scents and spices, suspended in time between an indelible past and contemporary urban modernity. Yet over the fascination of this contrast hangs a shadow: a search for peace and for a future identity often threatened by political and religious tensions that risk driving regression rather than evolution.

"In my reinterpretation through modular synthesis, the flute becomes a fragile presence surrounded by unstable noise patterns generated through the rhythmic modulation of a filter, while the flute sound itself is fragmented and processed with bit crushing and delay."

Sufi flute music in Istanbul reimagined by Demiurgo.

Sufi flute player, playing live in Istanbul Airport during Ramadan.

Recorded by Helen Copnall.

The jingling of cowbells, the bleating of goats and the whispering voice of the shepherd during milking at a family farmyard in Cercados de Araña, a living testimony of the sustainable living practices of a rural family from the area. 

Recording by Marina Díaz Medina, president of the Asociación de Propietarios Los Cercados. Part of the participatory sound mapping project "Voices and Sounds of the Sacred Mountains", by the Union of Associations of the Biosphere Reserve of Gran Canaria.

"My approach was to explore various parts of the recording through the use of destructive looping, granular synthesis and sequencing to create a layered piece that moves through aspects of noise, drone, tape loops and experimental. 

"The piece was live recorded on an iPhone with automation of some effect parameters, playing instruments and adjusting effects."

Goat milking in Cercados de Arana reimagined by Andy Lyon.