Cities and Memory - remixing the world

"For this reimagining I wanted to turn a disparate collection of sounds into something more cohesive, but with a structure and flow that mirrored the original radio recording. I also wanted to utilise audio solely from the original source material, without introducing additional musical elements.

The electronic bird sounds at the start were recorded onto an analogue dictaphone and played back at a local allotment. This was then re-recorded, along with ambient sounds of the surrounding area - bird song, wind, distant traffic etc.

A short section of the bell chimes were cut up and looped with a gated delay and reverb. This was slowly increased until the loop was completely saturated and totally unrecognisable.

For the last section of the piece, I digitally processed radio interference and other sounds, and introduced looped vocal samples, run through a granular synthesizer."

Composition by Grey Frequency.

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

"When I heard piece 33, I really wanted to pick apart the music hidden away in the background. These parts were cut, looped and effected to provide a pallet of parts for the rest of the track. There were also a couple of station ID's that I wanted to pull out too, and these became the name and reference point for the track. All of the orginal piece had a long distance radio phasing effect throughout and I wanted to use this rather that try to hide or fix it. This approach is embellished on organ and vocal parts as its character was too good to leave out. I then set about the feel of the piece and wanted to aim for something akin to The Chemical Brothers first album "Exit Planet Dust". I pulled drum breaks and some meaty, fuzz bass to thicken up the track. I wanted to keep it brief, not too indulgent, so aimed for about 3 minutes. This allowed enough space for the parts of the original piece and also enough variation before the end, I think."

Composition by Rusty Sheriff. 

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

"The material I chose to work with- short wave transmissions  from the beginning of the first gulf war of 1991 (?) was so touching and grim that I felt the best approach was to bring light to it. I remixed a track of mine, SKELLINGTON SECOND LINE into it to help keep it moving and to give the urgency of the original broadcast some ballast and forward momentum. My track was made on Dumbek, Qarqaba, Toolhandles, and finger snaps. I cut the original 58 grueling minutes down to a selection of static, voices and music that ‘spoke’ to me and then cut them into my accompaniment. Having no understanding of Arabic, I used the voices as purely sonic elements, rearranging them with no ear to their meaning. I sincerely hope that it gives no offense to native speakers of Arabic and that my offering can be taken in a spirit of play."

Composition by Hearn Gadbois. 

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

"This is an off-the-air recording of shortwave radio station Radio Baghdad made on September 26, 1990.  The political situation was about to lead to the first Iraq war.  This was the European service on a frequency of 13,660 khz. which was aired between 20-22 UTC.  It was recorded in the Boston USA area.  Receiver was a Yaesu FRG-8800 with an indoor wire antenna.  Direct recording into a cassette recorder.

Date of recording: 9/26/1990"

Recorded by Lee Herterich, 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

"Live, off-air, approximately one-hour recording of Iraq's Mother of Battles Radio in Arabic on 27 January 1991 beginning at about 13:30 UTC on a shortwave frequency of 17940 kHz. As Iraq's main shortwave broadcasting facility was put out of action early during Operation Desert Storm but while Iraq still occupied Kuwait, the broadcast likely originated from one of the 500 kW transmitters of Radio Kuwait.

Mother of Battles Radio, named after the phrase "Mother of all Battles" used by Saddam Hussein to describe the upcoming war with the United States, replaced the regular domestic shortwave service of the Broadcasting Service of the Republic of Iraq. 

The recording consists of music, talk including exhortations against America and Bush, and frequent station identifications, e.g., "Huna idha'atu Umm al-Ma'arik" ("This is Mother of Battles Radio").

Reception of the broadcast was excellent with no interference until about the midpoint of the recording (around 13:59 UTC) when a faint jamming signal can be heard in the background. The recording is briefly interrupted when checking the signal on parallel frequencies (15600 kHz -- weaker; 9570 kHz -- not heard). There is also a brief interruption at about the 29m:25s mark in the recording due to a tape change."

Recorded by Richard Langley. 

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

Andrea Borgnino shares the following off-air recording clips of the final shortwave broadcasts from Radiotelevisione italiana (RAI): 

15380 kHz 6:30 pm UTC 30 September 2007 - Program for North America in Italian.

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

"The original piece of shortwave radio inspired me to imagine the radio waves transmitting through the air, over the mountains of the the Himalayas and eventually across the universe."

Composition by Andrew Howden.

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

"Samples from Radio Afghanistan 1976 used in the track:

Treated loop of music from part of the original recording used at 0.01 in and throughout.

Bass tone from the beginning of the original recording used at 0.03 in and throughout.

I was intrigued when I initially heard the recording of Radio Afghanistan from 1976. I was a young Short Wave Listener in Coventry at the time so it comes with some personal nostalgia and it's from a period when the shortwave bands were a far busier sonically magical place than now (even though they are still sonically magical.)

I immediately loved the bass hum at the start of the recording and it’s interesting to hear The Voice of America’s "Yankee Doodle" in the background at 23 seconds in and VOA signing on at 59 seconds in.

Originally I tried to make a loop of a section of the main musical interlude but to no avail. As soon as I put part of it through some effects (Reason's Alligator Triple Filtered Gate) and combined it with a loop of the bass tone from the start of the recording I started getting somewhere. I added some drums influenced by a Big Youth track from 1975 then a bassline and sent it to my musical collaborator Jazz'min Tutum in Freiburg, Germany who adds:

"I was working on a praise poem for Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry when Pete sent me the track and I thought why not try those lyrics over it. Lee Perry's work has always been a "hauntology" of Kingston in terms of city and memory and I am sure he would have also been very interested in Pete's (use of) shortwave recordings especially the frequencies contained within them...""

Composition by Pete Polanyk.

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

"It was a very simple sample to start with, so it was easy to separate out useful sounds to make percussive sounds, tones and reverb impulses. I layered a couple of synths on top, echoing the shortwave signal and then drenched everything in loads of reverb and delay to try to recreate the sense of the signal struggling through space."

Composition by David Webb. 

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

The first [Radio Afghanistan] recording is from 1976. The recording was made with the GRUNDIG Satellit 600 Professional recorder unit prototype I got from my uncle who worked at GRUNDIG as mentioned before.

Date: ?, sometime in 1976

Time: around 1130 GMT/UTC

QRG: 15195 kHz

Listen carefully to this recording. In the background you can hear the VOA Yankee Doodle played before starting its programmes. The programme was broadcast via the BBC Ascencion Island Relay, at 1130 GMT the VOA programme in Spanish for South America began. Later in the recording you can also hear Radio Moscow's ID signal.

Recording by Manfred Reiff. 

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