Cities and Memory - remixing the world

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

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Cities and Memory - remixing the world episodes

  • 1872: Protect the 62 per cent
    Mesnjak Forest reimagined by Cities and Memory.
    Approximately 62% of Slovenia is covered in forests, much of which is "primary forest" - the most biodiverse forest. Forests, however, are always under threat from industry, whether logging to use the forest's resources or making way for urban areas and construction. The mighty Bialowieza Forest across Poland, for instance, is under great threat. This piece is a reminder that we must protect and conserve our forest land. The first half is an ambient synth-led celebration of the beauty of natural forests, but the drums represent the encroaching threat of industry, beginning with hats. Samples of chainsaws are interjected amongst the snares and percussion, and as the drums become more insistent, we are invaded by the full presence of foresting loggers. The piece closes with a falling tree and a warning.
    5 min
  • 1870: Narathu
    Temple bats in Myanmar reimagined by Pascal Savy.
    "The inspiration for this track came from looking into the history of the temple in which the original file was recorded. the text below has been copied from this website:
    https://luxurymyanmarrivercruises.com/dhammayangyi-temple/
    The massive Dhammayangyi Temple was constructed in the 12th century (supposedly between 1167 and 1170) by the order of King Narathu, who was later given the name Kalagya Min or “the king slain by Indians”. Narathu claimed the succession of Bagan throne by murdering his own king father and his elder brother, who had been chosen to become King, in cold blood. Legend had it that the King felt guilty for what he did and was so worried about bad karma that he had the Dhammayangyi Temple constructed to gain merit and redeem for the sin of killing his father and elder brother. According to legendary tales, King Narathu supervised the construction himself. He set the rule that workers would have their arms chopped or even be beheaded if they the brickworks were not perfectly fit without a gap between two given bricks.
    Unfortunately, the construction of Dhammayangyi Temple could never be completed. It was soon halted after the assassination of King Narathu. There are two main theories about the mastermind behind the assassination of the king. The better-known theory claims that the King was assassinated by a group of Indians dispatched by the King of Pateikkaya. Narathu was said to kill one of his wives, also an Indian princess, for having practice Hindu rituals. For this reason, in order to avenge his beloved daughter, the Indian King mandated eight assassins to get rid of King Naru right in the Dhammayangyi Temple. The lesser known tale states that the assassination plotted by the invaders from Sri Lanka.
    Some people believe the temple is now haunted and say many of the interiors have been bricked up to prevent ghosts from roaming the corridors. true or not, what's sure is that the temple is now full of bats flying all over the interior.
    My track is somehow an evocation of the damned soul of Narathu trying to return to the temple to repair his deeds and i used the sounds of the bats as a metaphor for the suffering inflicted by Narathu on his family and his people.
    Technically speaking i only used sounds derived from the original file - no additional synths or samples from sound external sound banks.i started by eq-ing out the sounds made by people visiting the temple to only keep the bats. i then transpose the file (pitch shifting) and slowed it down thus generating new sound files. i also loaded the original eq-ed file into a hardware sampler and extracted some new sounds from it. finally i used a granular synthesiser to produce new textures derived from the sound of the bats. once i had all those soundfiles ready, i loaded them up in ableton and improvise with them until this piece emerged. i didn't use any external effect except for some artificial reverb in order to give some extra depth to the sounds."
    8 min
  • 1868: Ciphers (Mandalay)
    Moustache Brothers troupe reimagined by Charlie Cooper.
    "When experiencing something unfamiliar, we often search for points of connection that help us make sense of our experience. Ciphers attempts to highlight and expand upon the moments of connection I experienced listening to this recording in hopes of bridging the gap between the Moustache Brothers, the listener and myself."
    5 min
  • 1866: Sonetto a Laura (Arquà Petrarca)
    The bells of Arquà Petrarca reimagined by Cities and Memory.
    This piece takes the town of Arquà Petrarca's status as the home of Petrarch, transposing his famous poem "Sonetto a Laura" over the sounds of the bells, with multiple layers of ondes martenot linking the poem from the past with the bells of the present over the centuries.
    3 min
  • 1865: Collage II (Myanmar)
    Mandalay Marionette Theatre, reimagined by Augusto Meijer.
    "'Collage II' is an electroacoustic music composition project that is based on a single field recording created in Myanmar. This recording has been manipulated with an emphasis on classic tape manipulation techniques, referring to the ground principles of musique concrète. Resulting sounds are inspired by the architecture of Myanmar."
    7 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.