Cities and Memory - remixing the world

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

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Cities and Memory - remixing the world episodes

  • Radio Peking
    "I was so struck by the way the symphonic intro and outro music was distorted and processed through the shortwave radio medium that I had to use it as source material for a piece. My hope is to retain the strident nature of the original material of the orchestra while creating a hypnotic and open sound environment for sonic exploration on the part of the listener."

    Composition by Matt Zook.

    Part of the Shortwave Transmissions project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of shortwave radio - find out more and see the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/shortwave

    5 min
  • Radio Afghanistan station ID
    "This second [Radio Afghanistan] recording was made at the end of the 1970s during the soviet occupation of Afghanistan when RA programmes were rebroadcasted via Soviet transmitters. In this case it is the english service beamed to several parts of Asia.

    The recording was made one some day at 0900 GMT on 15435 kHz. It was a relay via Soviet transmitter."

    Recorded by Manfred Reiff, courtesy of the Shortwave Radio Archive.

    Part of the Shortwave Transmissions project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of shortwave radio - find out more and see the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/shortwave

    2 min
  • Radio Tawantinsuyo (Peru): 1970s
    "Rising early in the morning was a regular activity of DXers who wanted to hear the more difficult stations from Latin America that used to fill the shortwave bands.  One of those was Radio Tawantinsuyo, located in Cuzco, Peru.   The station was on 6,175khz in the 49 meter band but was more often heard on variable frequencies as low as 6,173 khz.   This recording of the station sign on brings back so many memories for DXers who focused on South America."

    Recorded by Dan Robinson, courtesy of the Shortwave Radio Archive.

    Part of the Shortwave Transmissions project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of shortwave radio - find out more and see the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/shortwave

    5 min
  • The death of Mao Zedong
    "Radio Peking- Death of Mao Zedong (9 September 1976)

    The death of Chairman Mao at 82 in 1976 brought to an end the Cultural Revolution which cost millions of lives.

    Monitored from Radio Peking shortwave service. Commentary in English and funeral music."

    Recorded by Ian Holder, courtesy of the Shortwave Radio Archive.

    Part of the Shortwave Transmissions project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of shortwave radio - find out more and see the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/shortwave

    29 min
  • If on a winter's night in Venice...
    Venice Santa Lucia station on New Year's Eve reimagined by Cities and Memory.

    In this piece, the clouds of arpeggiated synth notes represent the busy travellers coming in and out of the station, while the steadier bass pulses represent the surety and predictability of a rail timetable and the practical reliability of the trains taking people home.

    The scene in the station on a foggy, freezing New Year's Even put us in mind of the opening of Calvino's novel If On A Winter's Night A Traveler, so we included a (disembodied) voice reading aloud from the book to bring these worlds together.

    The text is as follows: 

    The novel begins in a railway station, a locomotive huffs, steam from a piston covers the opening of the chapter, a cloud of smoke hides part of the first paragraph. In the odor of the station there is a passing whiff of station café odor. There is someone looking through the befogged class, he opens the glass door of the bar, everything is misty, inside, too, as if seen by nearsighted eyes, or eyes irritated by coal dust. The pages of the book are clouded like the windows of an old train, the cloud of smoke rests on the sentences. It is a rainy evening; the man enters the bar; he unbuttons his damp overcoat; a cloud of steam enfolds him; a whistle dies away along tracks that are glistening with rain, as far as the eye can see.
    5 min
  • New Year's Eve at Venice's station
    New Year's Eve 2021, outside Santa Lucia train station in Venice. The bells nearest the train station are ringing for early evening mass while people hurry in and out of the station to carry on with their new year plans. We listen to the bells then head into the station, listening out for platform announcements, conversations and all the ambience you'd expect from a train station buzzing with life at the end of the year. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
    4 min
  • Czech crisis radio (Xqui remix)
    "The source recording had an almost anti-ambient feel to which I added neo-ambient loops. It's intended to be soothing yet slightly disturbing."

    Composition by Xqui.

    Part of the Shortwave Transmissions project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of shortwave radio - find out more and see the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/shortwave

    4 min
  • Radio Moscow drone
    "Drone piece using the original audio as a backdrop. Drone was created in Ableton Live using Wavetable synth run through some vintage effects."

    Composition by Andy Truscott.

    Part of the Shortwave Transmissions project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of shortwave radio - find out more and see the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/shortwave

    4 min
  • Berlin sequence
    "The piece is made from as many sequences as I could fit in – a representation of the Berlin sound."

    Composition by Simon Woods.

    Part of the Shortwave Transmissions project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of shortwave radio - find out more and see the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/shortwave

    4 min
  • Communiqué
    "This piece works with a complicated moment in the history of space music, electronic music, and political music. 

    "Part of the design of China’s first satellite, Dongfanghong 1, was to make music using the satellite’s telemetric system. Specifically, it was designed to play the world the Maoist anthem “The East is Red," from which it took its name. An oral history of the project relates that during ground tests the song was out of tune. Care needed to be taken musically - the advice was to “add harmonic waves” - and technically, with insulation that would prevent pitch modulation in orbit due to changes in temperature or electromagnetic interference.

    "During the broadcast, the satellite sounds transition suddenly from cadenced song to chaotic telemetry. The radio announcers explain repeatedly that the first forty seconds are the music, and the next 20 seconds are telemetric data. But the result is a mixed broadcast that splices together different orders of communication, encoded verbally, musically, and as data signal. That moment of transition also breaks the revolutionary song down and creates an unexpected gesture toward a different type of music—suggestive of something like what Theodore Adorno called a dialectical music, or the image of emancipation he found in atonal music.

    "The first part of the piece samples the musical portion of the satellite transmission. The second part is a remix of the ground rebroadcast, with its framing and explanations of the data/music/text. The third part slows down and follows the data signal, with its mostly atonal sequence of notes."

    Composition by John Savarese.

    Part of the Shortwave Transmissions project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of shortwave radio - find out more and see the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/shortwave

    12 min

About Cities and Memory - remixing the world

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Cities and Memory remixes the world, one sound at a time - a global collaboration between artists and sound recordists all over the world.