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

  • 1889: Wire machine music, Hoi An
    Reimagined by Cities and Memory. The percussive nature of the rattling machine was the inspiration for this piece of metal machine music. All the synth parts were generated from the original field recording, and the drum parts are intermittently replaced with clips taken from the recording, like car horns, the spinning of the machine, a passing motorcycle and other noises.
    3 min
  • 1889: Old wire drawing machine, Vietnam
    Recorded by Marcel Gnauk. The sound of an old wire drawing machine in Vietnam.
    "The machine is so loud that you can barely hear the street traffic. On the left side is the “endless” wire and the machine unwrinkled the steel and the other man walks with it until he has the correct length so that the men next to me can cut the wire with this long wire cutter."
    "When you look at the motor you can read Hanning Phase Induction Motor and Taiwan Technology! I made a little bit of research and Hanning is actually a German Company based in Oerlinghausen but has locations in Lithuania, China, and India for example."
    2 min
  • 1888: Rivers of Blood (Rome)
    Rome's Colosseum, reimagined by Mark Baker. 
    "I think the mournful chords contrast the happy tourist feel to the start of the clip, but then later in the clip the commentary gets darker with the "rivers of blood" line and we remember the history of Roman violence. There is hope at the end though, with a crying baby."
    3 min
  • 1887: Tour guides inside the Colosseum
    The sounds inside one of the world's most famous tourist attractions, Rome's Colosseum, as tour guides take groups around the huge seated areas, snippets of Rome's history flitting in and out of earshot. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
    3 min
  • 1886: The lamenting engines
    Toronto Indy Lights race reimagined by Cities and Memory. Taking the starting point of discovering the key that the car engines roar at is Gbm, we created a piece with multiple synth and instrument parts in the same key, to tap into and express those elements of the pure sound of a high performance engine that can sound oddly mournful, as if the engines are lamenting to the world as they whizz past. The synth parts are complemented by various tracks from the field recording at different speeds, which move around the stereo field as if they're racing across it.
    4 min
  • 1884: The bells ring out: "No Grandi Navi"
    The bells of San Trovaso reimagined by Cities and Memory.
    This piece was inspired by seeing one of the frequent anti-cruise ship messages on a poster around Venice, attacking these huge vessels for the damage they do to the city, physically and socially. Here the bells have been transformed into an approximation of the engines of a cruise ship, under which a squall of feedback symbolises Venice being swallowed up by the eventual harm done by cruise ships. At the end, all we are left with is the sound of waves, as the city descends into the lagoon.
    5 min
  • 1882: The ski lift to heaven
    Ski lift journey reimagined by Cities and Memory. The ski lift on this beautifully sunny day up in the Dolomites has been reimagined as a lift directly up into heaven. The sound of the lift on its cable has been used to create a rhythm around which various glass instruments create the airy, celestial feeling of the ski lift to heaven.
    3 min
  • 1880: Travels in concrete
    Reimagined version of the Bremen Hauptbahnhof by AJ Born: "I just used only sounds from the recording: I found a little rhythm that made my beat and the "instruments" are mainly voices that I modified."
    4 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.