Cities and Memory - remixing the world

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

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Cities and Memory - remixing the world episodes

  • 1977: A Call from Sri Lanka
    Kandy call to prayer reimagined by Didier Ambact. 
    "The way the muezzin voice was recorded had a huge influence on the track I made. First, the recording is full of street noises, we can hear peoples shouting, trucks, car horns… I used those noises as beat elements as well as an ambience so the muezzin seems to sing alone in a busy city.
    "On the other hand, I created a dub track because it’s usually a peaceful style that can match a call for prayer. The street noises however bring some stress. And the track is more and more stressful because I introduced more noises and a creative use of the muezzin voice with a granular synthesis machine, until a synth pad release the pressure."
    6 min
  • 1973: Toothache Temple
    Tooth Temple, Sri Lanka reimagined by Benjamin Minimum.
    "First, I selected around twenty very short moments from all along the ceremony. Then I chose the very first sound and the last part (the noise of the audience) and created a free two-minute sequence describing the concentration/rehearsal time of the ceremony participants. Then I start to work on the ceremony in its entirety, leaving some initial sounds alone or hiding them but without breaking the true duration. Then I placed other sound, mainly from the initial selection, putting them back often at the initial time where they were picked."
    "All the sounds used came from the original ones, sometimes as it were originally played, sometimes cut or pitch or reworked with effects, delay, reverb, eq… although by separating highs and lows, pungi and drums..."
    "My approach was to mix the real sounds with interferences felt by a person in the middle of it, who was suffering from a toothache. Details are repeating, sounds disappearing, others hiding them. His mind tries to follow but the pain felt distracts his attention and details or other people presence and acts fires his imagination, but he is although living a mystical experience with all that."
    10 min
  • 1975: Song of the Staring Frog
    Hantana frog recording reimagined by Alan Bleay. Image by Stephane Marin.
    "Apart from the kick drum and Tablas all sounds were reconstructed using sounds from the original audio and with a bit of help from technology to conceive a rich soundscape of the Sri Lankan countryside…..of sorts."
    6 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.