Cities and Memory - remixing the world

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

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Cities and Memory - remixing the world episodes

  • 3491: Satan's flight
    Lucifer in Hell created by Millie Wissar.

    "Eternal darkness of horror. A place frozen by the flapping wings of Satan. This composition was created with dry ice recordings, real screams, long reverbs and shimmery delays. Beware! You could be summoned by the dark lord."

    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
  • 3492: Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (Oh Hell) - Part 1: Deep Freeze, Part 2: Brandy of the Damned
    Earth's centre created by Nick St. George.

    "I read the relevant canto of the text, which tells us that the Earth's Centre is the home of Dis (Satan) and that it is a frozen world where Dis continually tortures Judas, Brutus and Cassius. I took a somewhat literal approach to start with and came up with something akin to a Hammer Horror soundtrack (part 1). 

    "Then my artistic advisor (Mrs St G) suggested I take a more oblique approach, so I started looking for other literary references to Hell. George Bernard Shaw's: "Hell is full of musical amateurs. Music is the brandy of the Damned" took my fancy, for obvious reasons. So you'll hear some of these poor, cursed musos in Part 2. I trust the join doesn't show too much and a consistent atmosphere pervades the whole thing. 

     My thanks to Freesound, Librivox and ZapSplat for various contributions."

    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
    8 min
  • 3493: Earth's centre
    Earth's centre created by Sterling Basement. 

    Descent:
    We begin our final descent into hell, tumbling down its ledges like the trash thrown from Akio Suzuki’s garbage can in Kaidan ni Mono wo Nageru. We are pulled by gravity. 
    (link for Suzuki: https://issueprojectroom.org/news/akio-suzuki-aki-onda)

    Frozen core:
    We find ourselves in the frozen wasteland gazing out toward Lucifer, locked in the ice, at the center of the universe. As the frozen path begins to fracture beneath us, we run, and leap onto his hairy haunches to climb our way out of hell.

    When we had reached the point at which the thigh  
    revolves, just at the swelling of the hip,  
    my guide, with heavy strain and rugged work,  
    reversed his head to where his legs had been  
    and grappled on the hair, as one who climbs — 
    I thought that we were going back to Hell.

    Great inversion:
    As we climb, it seems that gravity and our compass fall apart. Are we climbing up? Down?

    Where is the ice? And how is he so placed
    head downward? Tell me, too, how has the sun
    in so few hours gone from night to morning?

    As we reach the center of the Earth, our confusion increases.

    I raised my eyes, believing I should see
    the half of Lucifer that I had left;
    instead I saw him with his legs turned up;
    and if I then became perplexed, do let
    the ignorant be judges — those who can
    not understand what point I had just crossed.

    Without gravity without echo
    The weightless center of the earth is an anechoic chamber at the core of this infernal inverted beehive. 

    you passed the point to which, from every part, all weights are drawn 

    Ascent
    Gravity begins to lift us and we fly sightless away from evil. We feel for the vibrations of our fellow travelers."

    Sterling Basement is John Roach (USA), Jason Glasser (France), Jerome Lorichon (France), Craig Dongoski (USA), and Carlo Giordani (Italy). 

    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
    14 min
  • 3494: Vexilla Regis
    Traitors to lords created by Francesco Ameglio.

    "While composing I've tried to picture the space and the damned within a suspended moment free of any time structure, a frozen moving picture where Dante (and the listener) have the chance to let their thoughts blending with obscure materials. 

    "The focus is on the environment, its mental representation and its power to activate deep states of meditation both in the dark and the light corners of our inner self."

    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
  • 3495: Traitors and lords
    Traitors to lords created by Daryn Brown.

    "I did lots of reading for this one. My first thoughts were of fire and screaming so I was surprised to read about ice, extreme cold and contorted frozen bodies. I took a Foley approach, collecting sounds of breaking ice, human pain and bat wings (slowed and pitched to created the giant wings keeping everything frozen). I found this whole project quite disturbing."

    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
  • 3488: Heard from Distance (Soundscape for inside your head)
    Valsanzibio bells heard from distance at Villa Barbarigo reimagined by Audio Obscura.

    "I loved the field recording I used but once I sat down with it, found it quite hard to work with. After a few efforts which I discarded, I sat down and just improvised with the recording, making loops fed into effects. It sounded OK so without a plan just added some basic improvised piano one night after a couple of glasses of wine. 

    "Listening back I thought it was OK. After this I began to arrange the track, adding orchestral sounds and drum sounds - I couldn't imagine using anything that sounded modern so wanted percussion that didn't sound modern but reflecting an older Italy. I then added church style organ sounds. It was hard to navigate the soundscape for this one and I had doubts all the time in making this."
    5 min
  • 3485: Inside Tempio Canoviano
    The Tempio Canoviano or Temple of Canova is a neoclassical temple, based on the designs of Antonio Canova, in Possagno in norther Italy. 

    Work on the temple begun in 1819 and resumed after Canova's death in 1822.  The structure recalls the Pantheon of Rome. Canova almost single-handedly financed the site since he wished to be buried there after his request of a burial at the Rome Pantheon was denied. Upon completion in 1830 his remains were transferred to the church. 

    This soundscape is from inside the grand temple, with echoing reverbs, but also a faint recording of plainsong being heard that nods to an ancient past in 2020.

    5 min
  • 3487: Bells at Villa Barbarigo
    Villa Barbarigo (also known as Villa Barbarigo Pizzoni Ardemani from its various proprietors) is a 17th-century rural villa in northern Italy, with historic gardens, fountains and beautiful grounds. Here we're standing at the old entrance gates to the villa, through which people would have arrived somewhat grandly by boat. 

    Today's soundscape is the distant bells from nearby Valsanzibio drifting across the air, underpinned by the chirping of cicadas, but in 2020 the sound is punctuated by passing cars, instead of boats. 

    Recorded by Cities and Memory.
    2 min
  • 3486: Mass for Mellotron
    Tempio Canoviano in Possagno reimagined by Nick St. George. 

    "When I was a Prog Rock-loving teenager, I had a thing about Mellotrons. I used to buy albums just because they had a Mellotron on them! Imagine my delight then, when I recently discovered some virtual Mellotron software - its choral sounds seeming appropriate for this setting, though they turned out to be rather more demonic than angelic! 

    "There's even a hint of distant choral singing in the field recording as a cue. It is almost as if some arcane and somewhat unsettling ritual is being performed in the church, while daily life continues all around it. And this is interrupted occasionally by a mad and somewhat limited organist, performing upon an instrument that has seen better days!"
    8 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.