Cities and Memory - remixing the world

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

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Cities and Memory - remixing the world episodes

  • 1994: The west prayer
    Riyadh maghrib call to prayer, reimagined by Cities and Memory - lines of synths begin with a "call and response" dialogue with the call to prayer lines, until they come together in unison and create a unified wall of inclusive sound.
    5 min
  • 1983: Rolen (Sri Lanka)
    Knuckle Range soundwalk reimagined by Leon Huene.
    "Stephane's field recording almost immediately reminded me of the beginning of the memory maker scene in "Bladerunner 2049" with the memory maker Dr. Stelline. It made me think of Stephane's recording as being one of her reconstructed memories. 
    "In my mind, I imagined an entire backstory to this memory maker. She's trying to reconstruct fragments of lost memories to find her father who she lost contact with as a child near a forest river. She suspects he died there as they were running away from something, but doesn't know for sure.
    "This is what set the stage for my imagination. I worked on that premise sonically and let the song take me where it was going. To me, it seems after finishing, that Dr. Stelline was trying to retrace all the memories leading up to that point. 
    "In terms of how I incorporated the recording, I took Stephane's piece and used it during the climax to mimic sidechain compression. I also used it to create percussion. I used Simpler's pitch envelope on Ableton to create a strong transient kick, and snare. I decided to place the river in the climax because, to me, in the story I invented, that represents Dr. Stelline at the edge of the final memory of her father, working at the limits of her knowledge and capabilities as a memory maker. 
    "I also ended the piece with a light touch of Stephane's river recording. I wanted the whole piece to feel to the listener as though they were accessing a memory."
    Image by Stephane Marin.
    6 min
  • 1981: Kogalla Lake
    Shrimps in Sri Lanka reimagined by Ludovic Medery. Image by Stephane Marin.
    "I love underwater sounds. I was wondering how to transform them? How can I create different kind of sound with one recording? So I decide to use both plugins (GRM tools) and tape recorders (Revox). And after that I use Ableton live to assemble the sounds together. I decide to work with the sound in a "musique concrète" way. 
    It was very fun to do!"
    10 min
  • 1980: Vajata (Sri Lanka)
    Sri Lanka train journey reimagined by Masha Sha.
    "What can be more beautiful than a train song? This thought shaped my reimagining approach. I stayed with the original file without introducing anything new. Though, I did not want to interfere, I started with the wave interference by overlapping original sound of the train with the reverse version. I thought of the train traveling back and forth at the same time. Then, I highlighted and repeated few sound elements from the original file to carry the melody. ​"
    3 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.