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

  • 2442: The Electromagnetic Chorus
    Electromagnetic dawn chorus reimagined by Cities and Memory.
    It's uncanny how much the phenomenon known as the "electromagnetic dawn chorus" sounds like real birdsong, so an obvious starting point was to blend this sound with birdsong from one of my favourite local spots, Wytham Woods near Oxford - which is a site of special scientific research so fits the theme nicely.
    From there, the piece is designed to create a picture of what it might be like to "see dawn" in space, moving across the Earth until the sun appears, breaking on one side of our field of vision until it magnificently reveals itself in full. This is watching the sun rise in outer space.
    Part of the Space is the Place project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/space
    Photo by Tyler van der Hoeven (https://unsplash.com/@tyvdh?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/search/photos/space%2C-sun?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)
    4 min
  • 2441: Dawn in space
    Recording by the European Space Agency.
    'Dawn chorus' signals detected by ESA Cluster’s WBD (Wide Band Data) instrument.
    High-energy electrons get trapped in the Earth’s radiation belts. When they are accelerated by the electromagnetic field, they produce this familiar sound. With the help of missions studying particles in space like the four Cluster spacecraft, ESA scientists are investigating how the electrons are accelerated and how the sound like the 'dawn chorus' of birds is created.
    Part of the Space is the Place project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/space
    Photo by Tyler van der Hoeven (https://unsplash.com/@tyvdh?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/search/photos/space%2C-sun?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)
    1 min
  • 2440: Strange sounds from the "Bremen hole"
    Recorded by Cities and Memory. The "Bremen hole" is a tribute to the famous story by the Brothers Grimm, "The Town Musicians of Bremen", which involves a donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster teaming up to ward off a band of robbers. Putting a coin into this manhole cover-like device triggers off a sound show of all four animals - a surprising sonic tourist attraction in the centre of the city!
    2 min
  • 2437: Prayer is better than sleep
    Fajr call to prayer reimagined by Cities and Memory. 
    Standing on a rooftop just before sunrise and looking over Essaouira, it was hard not to think of radio waves undulating above the city, pulsing from the TV aerials and joining the beautiful call to prayer in the sky above me, creating a cosmic cloud of sound where tradition and technology meet. 
    This piece creates a version of that cloud, as radio waves pulsate and surround the listener, while the Fajr call to prayer fades in and out. One synthesised part recreates the waves of the Atlantic, which can clearly be heard in the original recording alongside the muezzin's call. 
    The piece title comes from the line "prayer is better than sleep", which is contained within the Fajr call to prayer.
    8 min
  • 2436: Haus der Tripadvisor, Bremen
    The Haus des Glockenspiels reimagined by Cities and Memory.
    This piece reimagines a famous tourist attraction through the prism of its Tripadvisor reviews - from the positive to the negative, to the utterly banal, and even reviews from people who never even visited, it's all in here. Our experiences as tourists are increasingly mediated by review sites like Tripadvisor, and it means more and more of us are having the same homogeneous experience, wherever we travel. 
    Surrounded by tourists and the ghost of Tripadvisor, it's as if you can hear the voices of tourists past writing their reviews in the very air around you - and that's how you visit the Haus der Tripadvisor.
    5 min
  • 2435: The sonic display at the Haus des Glockenspiels, Bremen
    Bremen, Germany - on the hour in a beautiful backstreet of the old city, a display of 20 porcelain bells performs a nine-minute, glockenspiel-like sound display. A series of pretty tunes ring out across the rooftops, while rotating panels in the walls change around to tell various stories from the city's history, like famous seafarers and aviators. It's a genuine sonic tourist attraction, so a must for field recording.
    Recorded by Cities and Memory.
    10 min
  • 2434: Forever at Tchaikovsky's House
    Reimagined by Cities and Memory. 
    Sometimes when you listen to an opera singer, you feel like their voice is capable of extraordinary things, like going on forever. This piece captures that spirit, taking snippets of an opera singer's rehearsal in Perm and stretching them out, then blending them into multiple layers of synth, to create the impression that a majestic wave of neverending drones is issuing forth from the singer. 
    The recording was a challenge to work with - being recorded outside next to busy roads and capturing a snatch of secret sounds stolen through a window, there's a lot of background noise and traffic to fight through to get to the desired source. 
    We approached this piece having spent some time listening to the astonishing distorted cassette tape explorations of Ian William Craig, whose vocals have something of the undramatic opera about them. 
    As such, we spent quite a lot of time cleaning up and stripping back the recording to isolate the source, followed by then dirtying it up again with various tape and vinyl effects - once we'd got the effect we were looking for on the vocals, it was a case of blending them closely into layers of heavily-effected synth arpeggios to create the dreamlike effect.
    4 min

About Cities and Memory - remixing the world

From the publisher's feed

Cities and Memory remixes the world, one sound at a time - a global collaboration between artists and sound recordists all over the world.