Cities and Memory - remixing the world

The sounds of dawn in La Reunion reimagined by Cities and Memory. 

"There's something optimistic and bright about the original field recording - you can sense a new day appearing and village life getting started, beginning with the natural world's dawn chorus.

"The different bird calls seem to play off one another like musical instruments, creating a call-and-response soundscape. In the reimagined piece, the interlacing piano loops represent the various bird calls passing from one side of the stereo field to the other. 

"Meanwhile, the occasional synth bed underpinning the piano loops stand for drones, a creation of the human world, representing machinery and other man-made sounds following the natural world as the village awakens.

"Dina Morgabin is an early name for La Reunion used by Arabic traders."

The sounds of a village waking up at dawn in La Reunion - birds, chickens, roosters, dogs barking and the hopeful optimism of a new day. Recorded by Marcel Gnauk.

Swiss Alpine stream in Davos reimagined by Joe Pino.

"The best daydreams remove us from Time for a brief moment. The peaceful stream in the mountains is the perfect setting to let the mind roam."

A recording of a peaceful mountain stream in the Alps above the town of Davos is interrupted by a passing snowcat tending to the pistes. Recorded during the World Economic Forum, when the town below was full of the world's most influential business and political leaders - but above the town, all is peaceful and normal.

Recorded by Cities and Memory.

The bells of Chiesa di San Rocco have a fairytale quality to them - the kind of pealing bells you'd expect to make an appearance in something by the Brothers Grimm, ringing out over the town that forms the backdrop to their latest fable. 

To reimagine the bells, we've converted the melody of their ringing into the sounds of various music boxes and glass instruments, blended in with a woozy, reverby version of the original buried underneath and plenty of smudging, blurring effects. This transforms the bells into a magical music box that might make an appearance in our fairytale from the Brothers Grimm, promising delights, or warning of horrors for whoever opens it. 

Reimagined by Cities and Memory.

At five o'clock, the bells at Chiesa di San Rocco high up on a hill overlooking the town of Possagno chime out for an extended period. Every bell in Italy has its own character and quality, and these bells have something of the "fairytale tower" about them, ringing melodically out over the town before slowly coming to a natural stop as their swinging ceases. Here we can hear the entire peal right up until the end, when the hum of the afternoon takes over once again. 

Recorded by Cities and Memory.

Hong Kong protest reimagined by John Downey.

"The Hong Kong protest field recording didn't so much inspire me to reimagine the sound as it caused me to reflect on the rise in authoritarianism and erosion of civil protections in democratic societies.  Protest movements that attempt to alter this trajectory, as we have plainly seen the central Chinese regime's violent responses, are mostly unsuccessful.  
"To me, the reverb and echo in the sound sample muddled the protesters chants, so I wanted to apply variations of granular synthesis that would emphasize these qualities, adding glitches and a faint cymbal to tense and confuse the mix.  I created granular instruments from the original sound in six out of eight tracks to maintain unity in tambre and tone while [attempting to] separate them in the stereo field.  I'm not well versed in mixing and need more practice. Compression may have drawn out some of the quieter sounds but I didn't use any here."

"It was a Sunday when another protest happened and when I arrived at Wan Chai (Hong Kong) island I already saw a huge crowd of protesters, media and police presence. The police were in the far background and didn't interfere by then.

"Everything was peaceful and I just walked around recording the intense ambience from the people around me and the organizer on stage.

"Later on, the people started walking and everyone thought that the walk goes to Central and so on but that is when the police blocked the road and the people had to leave the main road and couldn't move forward.

"All Police cars turned the signals on and I recorded all these sound effects.

"By the time I was almost in front of the crowd and felt the pressure of the people who are now coming from behind. It looked like that the situation could get out of hand and at this point, I felt like it was time to leave and get to the other side what was not easy but I managed it.

"On the other side, my eyes started burning and knew that someone used tear gas. A smaller crowd of people ran in my direction and I went with them into the mall. From there I went down to the MTR station and left the area."

Recorded by Marcel Gnauk.

Shanghai power station of art reimagined by Michelle Breslin.

"Harnessing the power and routing it into musical  energy, a wanderer travels alongside the workers." 

"Recording in the Shanghai Power Station of Art, China. 

"I was lucky to get a tour when the space was closed to the public, which offered a unique recording opportunity. I sat in the midst of Christian Boltanski’s “Storage Memory” exhibition, recording the space. 

"At first there is just the whine of power in the background, while occasional voices of staff come and go. 

"Later, a mechanism on the ceiling starts up, slowly moving photographic portraits printed on thin cloth around the huge hall. 

"The squeaks and rattles reverberate around the space beautifully and sounds from another installation drift through the corridors."

Recorded by Simon James.