Cities and Memory - remixing the world

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

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Cities and Memory - remixing the world episodes

  • Lift me, lift me
    A reimagined piece built from the sounds of the Monte Capanne cable car chairlift, which creaks and groans throughout as a Moog Mother-32 melody envelops it, representing the sun, the azure blue of the sea and the warmth of the restorative view from the summit, from which the entire island can be seen in every direction. Reimagined by Cities and Memory.
    4 min
  • Cable car on Monte Capanne
    At the top of Monte Capanne on the island of Elba off Tuscany, there's an old-style cable car lifting tourists to the top of the mountain. After climbing up the old-fashioned way, we paused to record the cable car mechanism on a clear day near the summit. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
    4 min
  • On the Hong Kong tramway
    A tram departs Central station in Hong Kong - from the interior you can hear people chatting, the rumble of the tracks, beeping, dinging and exterior ambience. Recorded by Marcel Gnauk.
    2 min
  • The wolves
    Waves on Flat Holm Island reimagined by Listing Ships.

    The waves sloshing under the jetty where boats arrive onto Flat Holm Island in Cardiff Bay is the central sound underpinning "The Wolves" by the band Listing Ships (featuring Cities and Memory creator Stuart Fowkes). This piece was built around the field recording of waves, and was originally released as part of the album The Flat Holm Island Sessions - it now takes its place in the Cities and Memory project as a testament to this recording session on the island.

    Musicians: Mike Bingham, James Pamphlion and Stuart Fowkes.  
    6 min
  • Black waves choking
    "I laid down the radio sample and broke it into two parts, having it bookend the piece. Then I started a drone produced through synthesizers on a 4 track cassette recording device. Over this main bed I added heavy low end synthesizers and a couple of layers of sparse noises with plenty of reverb. I meant to get a dark and intimidating sound to it. I wrapped the piece by mastering it through an analog mid-side compressor."

    Composition by Valmor Pedretti Jr. 

    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
  • Rawhide
    "The original shortwave radio transmissions contain a number of reports on the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, by various US reporters. I used a selection of samples and put them in chronological order, to retell the event. Musically, my piece complements the drama of the event as told by the reporters, using synths and sampled drums with sporadic, soft guitar and piano parts. "Rawhide", is the codename for Reagan used by the US secret service."

    Composition by Things Being Various. 

    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

    3 min
  • Squatters and unwanted insects of the Malayan Revolution
    "Working with this recording inspired me to learn some of the history of the Malayan Revolution. I like to work with audio collage and cut-ups, so I chose a technique where I could incorporate audio samples from old British movie reals about their efforts in Malaya, along with bits from a documentary. I also used contemporary field recordings made of rainstorms in Singapore. 

    I thought the music used by the Voice of Malaya would work well with some military drums so I layered those in at the beginning along with static and other sounds recorded off of shortwave radio. 

    Mixed into that was explosions and artillery and sounds of war. It starts off chaotic and goes into a disorienting cut-up piece, where fragmentary voices talk about the time period juxtaposed against the movie reel pieces. Bamboo flute textures were also used to convey a jungle feeling. For a short piece I can't convey the complexity of the situation, but could convey the chaos of it, with the aim of sounding as if a person were briefly tuning into this period of time."

    Composition by Justin Patrick Moore.

    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

    8 min
  • Radio Moscow - Soyuz 26
    As a space flight nut, I have many recordings from the 1970s from Radio Moscow. They used to broadcast on the medium wave, and I used to record the news bulletins during some of the space flights.
    In particular, there was a period between December 1977 and March 1978 when Soviet cosmonauts first lived aboard the Salyut 6 space station. I recorded each days' news reports on the flights, and also some additional items about them. 

    Recorded by Colin Anderton, 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
  • President Reagan assassination attempt
    VOA (Tuesday March 31,1981)
    Voice of America (shortwave) 9670khz. 0600 GMT.

    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

    8 min
  • Voice of the Malayan Revolution
    Broadcaster: Voice of the Malayan Revolution

    Date of recording: 1979
    Starting time: 0930
    Frequency: 15.790
    RX location: Singapore
    Receiver and antenna: Sony ICF-5900W, random wire.

    Recorded by Nigel Thornbury, 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

    4 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.