Cities and Memory - remixing the world

Limassol harbour reimagined by Giovanna Iorio.

"My piece is a tribute to Demetrios Stratos, Greek-Italian artist and to his research on the ritual values of the voice. I used the beginning of his work "O Tzitziras o Mitziras" (1978)  to create a state of trance, similar to the trance during religious rites and a sense of estrange. He also lived in Cyprus, his work is mysterious and fascinating."

Nepal traffic reimagined by A Box In The Sea.

"I heard this beautiful recording by Colin Hunter and it brought me instantly back to my time spent in Nepal. The traffic in Kathmandu is particularly arresting. The horns, from my point of view, were used more as a sign of impatience rather than warning. 

"But I loved their sound so with this remix I wanted the street to fade away and listen to the harmonies that normally sprint by your ears. All of these sounds were created with Colin's recording."

Normandy lockdown sound reimagined by Marg Laing.

"What could be more uplifting, defiant and hopeful than birds and bells? The chime of church bells will outlive all times of trial and despair. And from France to my windows where clanging and cheering had a similar cadence each Thursday. It is humbling to be an ear witness of such persistence."
Part of the #StayHomeSounds project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of the global coronavirus lockdown around the world - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/covid19-sounds

Two eruptions in quick succession at the Strokkur geyser, Iceland. Recorded by Marcel Gnauk.

Montreal lockdown sound reimagined by Jon Nicholls.

"I was assigned a recording from Montreal – ‘La Nuit Gouvernée’, which is a somewhat mysterious piece of audio. It’s not clear what’s happening or what the precise location might be; it has a slightly threatening, industrial feeling, with sustained machine-like drones punctuated by a-rhythmic metal percussive sounds.

"Rather than attempt to decipher the ambiguous context, I instead became interested in the two main musical elements: the background texture and the intermittent percussive sounds. I isolated both of these and began to process the material using a variety of filtering, shuffling and granular synthesis techniques. 

"As I began to work with the material in a more structural way, I found myself returning to my initial responses to the source material: a feeling of pervasive threat, the sense of a disrupted world, a fragile balance perpetually thrown off-kilter."

The slightly adapted title refers to a poetry collection by René Char, whose work explores similar territory.
Part of the #StayHomeSounds project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of the global coronavirus lockdown around the world - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/covid19-sounds

A journey on the elaborate and impressive Moscow metro system, taking in three stations: here you can listen to us taking the trip Kievskaya - Smolenskaya - Arbatskaya.

Recorded by Cities and Memory.

Moscow metro journey reimagined by Hans Glib.

"Various sources of inspiration combined to make this:

"I'm fascinated by the sounds of machinery and often use it as a basis for my pieces., both as rhythm and pads. The wheels on the track joints are too good not to use. "Then there's the "Cathedrals of the people" - the incredibly ornate metro stations, which made me think of those tremendous Gregorian chants you can hear in the actual churches. (Tho I had to cheat here - I was trying to use the train announcer's voice as a choir but it still needed a little real choral help to make the connection - otherwise all the sounds used in this piece were taken from the original sample)."

Cascado Salto waterfall, Patagonia reimagined by Renato Ribeiro.

"Another take on Salto deals with the concept of constancy, and contrasts it with the concept of intermittence. In Another take on Salto, the original recording is transformed over time, varying from the constant waterfall sound, to the repetition of scattered particles of itself. By sampling and repeating very short moments of the original recording (between 1 and 1000 milliseconds), new sounds emerge, with different pitch and caracter. Through a process of grain synthesis, combined with modulation and delay processors, it’s possible to experience the original recording through a new scope.”

A three-hour walk along the banks of the river Pingo in Chilean Patagonia takes us through a lush, green forest and finally to the Cascado Salto waterfall. 

With a little bit of careful climbing around some slippery rocks, it was possible to get close in for this close-take recording of the torrenting water.

Recorded by Cities and Memory.

Helicopters above Davos at the World Economic Forum reimagined by Cities and Memory. 

It's the world's biggest gathering of leaders, and having experienced what it's like to be there, it really is like a hermetically-sealed bubble of big business and political leaders unlike anything else. The constant arrival of motorcades, private jets and helicopters bringing in the rich and powerful is very striking, and inspired this piece.

We start with Professor Rutger Bregman's viral speech from Davos, at which he attacks the hypocrisy of tax-avoiding billionaires, and take in other notable on-site protests at Davos from Leonardo Di Caprio and Greta Thunberg - Davos is notable for the relative lack of confrontational, oppositional speakers, replaced instead by a lot of back-slapping and chin-stroking pontification. 

The opening section represents Davos all year round, a quiet mountain town in the peace of the Alps, in itself a witness to the increasing impacts of climate change - the louder sections are built around the helicopter field recording, representing the WEF taking over the town and the news agenda, and also standing for the noise and bluster that rarely amounts to meaningful positive action in our world. 

From a compositional standpoint, we've deliberately given ourselves a limited palette of instruments for this piece, creating it entirely using Spitfire Audio's excellent - and free - Labs instruments.