Cities and Memory - remixing the world

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

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Cities and Memory - remixing the world episodes

  • 3536: The Abominable Sand
    The Abominable Sand created by Peter Hodgkinson.

    "Instead of the obvious religious intentions, I was more concerned with the present "violence" against nature. Most of Dante's Inferno is observational I wanted the experience to be immersive. 

    "The track has a breath or cycle that is clear at the beginning, this is subsumed by intensifying distorted voices and sounds which depict the descent into the Abominable Sand-the sand is the blurring of high pitch and static that consumes the voices. The Abominable sand is, in this case, like a desert sand storm that desiccates and shreds all that is captured in its path. 

    |The composition was sequenced in LogicX using MIDI instruments and treated sounds - samples were taken from DAT tapes of many years of sound exploration including shortwave voice recordings, vintage synths and found sound/ field recordings. Many were further treated in granular synthesis software. Native Instruments Kontakt sampler was used for the keyboard parts."

    Part of the Inferno project to imagine and compose the sounds of Dante’s Hell, marking the 700th anniversary of The Divine Comedy. To find out more, visit http://www.citiesandmemory.com/inferno

    9 min
  • 3535: Babel is burning
    The Abominable Sand created by The New Cow (Hans Glib, Deiter Banal, Klaus Inane)

    "A cacophony of cutup recordings of various religious fanatics and extremists makes for the foundation of the piece, overlaid with a distorted breathing and treated recordings of malfunctioning machinery. We took the name of the circle quite literally - and tried to convey the sound of the wretched sufferers writhing around under a rain of fire. 

    "Treated human voices add to the overall atmosphere of unease and suffering. the recurring deep boom is the only piece of structure of the piece, the rest is intentionally chaotic and tuneless."

    Part of the Inferno project to imagine and compose the sounds of Dante’s Hell, marking the 700th anniversary of The Divine Comedy. To find out more, visit http://www.citiesandmemory.com/inferno

    4 min
  • 3526: I Am A Moment Illuminating Eternity
    Sorcerors created by Thomas Van den Eynde.

    "I Am A Moment Illuminating Eternity is a short piece for string orchestra. When I was assigned zone 22 of Hell, I found myself in the region of sorcerors, fortune tellers and diviners. By spending their lives trying to foresee the future, they were punished by having "their heads turned backwards on their bodies and to be compelled to walk backwards throughout eternity". 

    "Musically I represented this by arranging slowly swelling tone clusters in an almost contrapuntal canon, always repeating itself. The recording should be perceived as only a fragment of an eternally continuous shifting mass of sound. 

    "Both the title and the music evoke a search for enlightenment, a quest to find a glimpse of Infinity. "

    Part of the Inferno project to imagine and compose the sounds of Dante’s Hell, marking the 700th anniversary of The Divine Comedy. To find out more, visit http://www.citiesandmemory.com/inferno

    4 min
  • 3527: DIScORD
    Sorcerors created by Drew Mulholland.

    "DIScORD was recorded in one of the DISsecting rooms at the university of Glasgow, I thought that finding the correct atmosphere was important for the taping."

    Part of the Inferno project to imagine and compose the sounds of Dante’s Hell, marking the 700th anniversary of The Divine Comedy. To find out more, visit http://www.citiesandmemory.com/inferno

    3 min
  • 3528: Simoniac!
    Simoniacs created by John Tenney.

    "At first, people might think that the ancient sin of simony (buying one's way into religious favour for salvation, or monetary gain) is hopelessly old-fashioned.

    "But there is still big money - maybe HUGE money - being made in the name of religion. Here, a modern man wants to buy a priesthood, with disastrous (in fact, INFERNAL) results..."

    Part of the Inferno project to imagine and compose the sounds of Dante’s Hell, marking the 700th anniversary of The Divine Comedy. To find out more, visit http://www.citiesandmemory.com/inferno

    4 min
  • 3529: The Magus
    Simoniacs created by Nikolas Parnell.

    "The idea of buying and selling holiness caught my attention. They never succeed in the strict sense, but those who commit Simony aren't looking to be brokers of real righteous powers. They're looking to profit off of all the people they fool in the process. 

    "The burning of feet was mentioned in the text, so I felt like I had to include flame, but be on the lookout for coins in all their varying applications. I have a feeling a baptism by fire makes one think back to all the times money slipped into their palm for the wrong reasons. 

    "Metal is also a huge player in this composition as an abstract representation of the money burning holes in their pockets and souls."

    Part of the Inferno project to imagine and compose the sounds of Dante’s Hell, marking the 700th anniversary of The Divine Comedy. To find out more, visit http://www.citiesandmemory.com/inferno

    4 min
  • 3530: Ingentes
    Flatterers created by Marco Furlanetto.

    "Flatterers are found in Malebolge, one very unique area in Dante's Inferno: according to the poet, here are among the worst sinners, those who made very bad use of the human highest virtues. Flatterers' words were meant to provide benefits, prestige, but at the same time they were full of lies, without limits in the way they were told. So Dante condemns them to lie in excrement, moaning and slapping themselves with dirty hands. Not a painful, but a very humiliating punishment.

    "Dante describes flatterers with words he would never use again in the whole Commedia: he's vulgar, raw, rhythmic, unpleasant sounds, piercing.

    "So I tried to convey all of this in my piece, and the title is taken from the prostitute Taide's story: it seems she would have used that word - which means "very much!" - in a context where it was simply too much, so not being a moderate person (even if the story is not very clear, meaning that maybe it was not Taide who spoke that word).

    "My piece is made only with recordings (ambiences and foley) of mine and the way of processing them reflects my immersion in reading the Flatterers section and imagining what the soundtrack for the flatterer could be, when (s)he thinks at who (s)he was in life, what (s)he did, and what present is living in hell, what infinite future awaits.

    "I suggest to listeners to read (loud) the Flatterers section, in order to understand how Dante wrote about them, understand his deep feeling about them... and then simply close their eyes and immerse themselves in  listening to the piece."

    Part of the Inferno project to imagine and compose the sounds of Dante’s Hell, marking the 700th anniversary of The Divine Comedy. To find out more, visit http://www.citiesandmemory.com/inferno
    11 min
  • 3531: So... funny
    Flatterers created by Coxidelic (Tracy Cox).

    "Reading Canto 18, Flatterers, I was curious why Dante placed this
    seemingly innocuous act in a lower circle of Hell than murder(!). In the canto, Dante sees people he recognises wading through (and covered in) excrement. Virgil, Dante’s guide, points out a courtesan named Thais scratching herself with filthy nails. 

    "This is where the inspiration started for my composition. A harsh, metallic, scratchy rhythm forms a base that I used to build into a sonic maelstrom, which represents the never-ending chaos of The Inferno. The composition ends with a warning."

    Created in Bitwig Studio, using Cyborg synth engine, Audio Damage effects, and various random samples.

    Part of the Inferno project to imagine and compose the sounds of Dante’s Hell, marking the 700th anniversary of The Divine Comedy. To find out more, visit http://www.citiesandmemory.com/inferno

    6 min
  • 3525: Drive it like you stole it
    Thieves created by Bassling. 

    "My white guilt is on display with appropriated rock and roll, including church-style organ, as well as lyrics reflecting on the role of religion in stealing land and lives from indigenous people."

    Part of the Inferno project to imagine and compose the sounds of Dante’s Hell, marking the 700th anniversary of The Divine Comedy. To find out more, visit http://www.citiesandmemory.com/inferno

    4 min
  • 3524: Eternal combustion
    Thieves created by Duncan Speakman.

    "In the Malebolge of the Inferno, thieves are tormented by reptiles. The bites of the reptiles sometimes cause the thieves to spontaneously combust, only to be regenerated again for further torment. In the spirit of the accused, recordings of reptiles and fires were 'stolen' from various sources then used in convolution processes to manipulate continuously unresolving musical passages. 

    "Some of the instrumentation was created using Tom Mud's gutter synthesis to evoke the guttural hisses of large lizards. "

    Part of the Inferno project to imagine and compose the sounds of Dante’s Hell, marking the 700th anniversary of The Divine Comedy. To find out more, visit http://www.citiesandmemory.com/inferno

    6 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.