Cities and Memory - remixing the world

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

By Cities and MemorySociety & CultureArtsMusicPlaces & Travel
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Cities and Memory - remixing the world episodes

  • Padova busker (Barney J Spigel version)
    Padova busker reimagined by Barney Spigel. 

    "Moved by the music being performed as well as the sense of place captured in the recording, I wanted to zoom in on some of my favourite slices of the soundscape by looping and layering them into an evolving pattern of rhythm, texture, harmony and timbre so as to hypnotise the listener into perceiving the original recording with an extremely heightened sense of what I love about it."
    4 min
  • Daylight
    Dolomite cows feeding reimagined by Janae Jean.

    "The sounds of cows grazing in the mountains with their bells jingling gave me the impression of shimmering light on a summer day. I used the audio to generate MIDI data from I constructed the melody, harmony, rhythm, and tempo of the piece."
    4 min
  • Two shorelines
    Stromboli beach reimagined by John Savarese.

    "A walk along an imaginary shoreline, using sounds from the volcanic stone and sand on Stromboli and a rocky beach on Long Island Sound."
    6 min
  • Sottopasso
    Sottopasso delle Cure, Florence reimagined by Hansklammer.

    "We reimagined the underpass as an underground florentine network of tunnels through which the listener explores. We took inspiration from the Lou Reed track Glory of Love that is can be heard in the original field recording and based our soundscape on different interpretations of that song using guitar / synth / bass and samples."
    14 min
  • Atonement
    Camposampiero mass bells reimagined by Lisa Rae Bartolomei.

    "The act of atonement, contemplation and faith in a higher power brings light to the darkest of times , and we are all finding our own ways to find hope amongst the blackness of a year of misery and confinement. The bell a symbol of love, warning and the heart of community acts as a guiding force through the stormy weather. 

    "This recording is built from abstractions of church bells. Bells being an archetypal sound and electroacoustic staple I was interested in exploring the possibility of working with their rich sonic textures to explore the emotions of a city longing for spring to come after a very dark winter."
    9 min
  • Fluidity
    Dolomite mountain stream reimagined by Andy Truscott.

    "A simple synth part that has been processed through some modular equipment. Some side chain compression is introduced to add movement to the piece. I felt inspired to write a simple ambient, evolving piece for this field recording." 
    4 min
  • Sans objectivity
    Villa del Conte campana della sera reimagined by Rafoo.

    "When I first heard and picked the field recording, I remembered it being warm and idyllic. However, the day I finally got to working on it, I couldn't feel anything but discomfort/uneasiness. The resonance from the bells which builds up in the later part of the recording sounded like something straight out of an avant garde horror flick. 

    "As hard as I tried to remove that feeling from the recording (by actually editing out that part), it persisted and spilled into every simpler instrument I was creating, the editing, everything. It didn't matter what the field recording was, I was feeling a certain way and projecting that everywhere. The reimagined sound is a piece of my current mind and self; ugly, angry, chaotic, untethered. I almost hate it as much as I hate myself."
    3 min
  • Mountain cows feeding
    Cows feed in the Dolomites close to a mountain rifugio, their cowbells clanking melodically - a classic European mountain sound. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
    3 min
  • Mountain stream under a bridge
    Close to Rifugio Contrin in the Italian Dolomites, a mountain stream rushes past under a simple wooden bridge. We placed the Zoom H6 recorder close to the water under the bridge to get as close a take as possible of the sound. 

    Recorded by Cities and Memory.
    4 min
  • Bells for Sunday mass from a hospital
    On a Sunday morning, as dozens of people queue up outside the hospital at Camposampiero in Italy for a Covid-19 test as part of ongoing pandemic precautions across the country, the bells ring out for Sunday mass from the town beyond, to remind us of life trying to go on as normal in the midst of such unprecedented times. 

    Recorded by Cities and Memory.
    3 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.