Cities and Memory - remixing the world

Moorgate reimagined by James Olsen.

"In constructing this piece, I used a multi-processing format between live analogue effects pedal manipulation and several digitizing software programs to create a 'Splace' somewhere between the time of my grandmother and father's tales of London and the mythology of my expectations of relocating from the U.S. to the U.K. for work. In practice, the accordion takes me to a familiar place while contextualizing the shared memories of a collective mind. In this way, every sense has been commingling and transferred through the osmosis of memory."

Part of our project The Next Station, reimagining the sounds of the London Underground and creating the first ever tube sound map. August 2016 - for more information see www.citiesandmemory.com/thenextstation

Tottenham Court Road reimagined by Iris van Geen.

"I used the original track to create atmosphere. Of course that is what it already was, but now it is a more controlled and manipulated surrounding sphere. And with the ‚operator’ (= synth on Ableton) a created the ongoing flow with this train-like-rythm and also the drops and spacey synth to simulate the mind flow one can experience when traveling metro or train. A movie that inspired me, and also because of the soundtrack was „Night on the Galactic Railroad” by Kenji Miyazawa, music by Haruomi Hosono. I discovered this movie just before I found this project on my way. The voice I used in the beginning is Alan Watts’, on his speech ‚Time, The Social Institution’. "

Part of our project The Next Station, reimagining the sounds of the London Underground and creating the first ever tube sound map. August 2016 - for more information see www.citiesandmemory.com/thenextstation

Baker Street reimagined by Gurdy Simm.

"I didn't really start with a plan, I just tried a few things until I found a section that I liked. I did some looping and layering until I had a weird drone with a simple repeating melody. It's quite noisy on the surface, but there are some beautiful subtle patterns underneath. I listen to a lot of drone and noise music, so I was mostly inspired by that."

Part of our project The Next Station, reimagining the sounds of the London Underground and creating the first ever tube sound map. August 2016 - for more information see www.citiesandmemory.com/thenextstation

Regent's Park reimagined by Flora Henderson.

"Underground textures for a Regent's Park audio scene, shakuhachi and cello.

The varied textures and pitches of the sounds in the recording immediately resonated. I wanted to explore these textures and pitches with acoustic instruments, so I took an electro-acoustic approach to this work. My approach has been informed by research that I have done on timbre and the Japanese shakuhachi flute, and the way in which contemporary composers have used the wide timbral compass of this instrument. I made basic analog recordings of the shakuhachi and cello (both instruments are played by me), then combined and manipulated the recordings in Logic Pro 9 in concert with the Regent's Park recording to develop this Cities and Memory composition."

Part of our project The Next Station, reimagining the sounds of the London Underground and creating the first ever tube sound map. August 2016 - for more information see www.citiesandmemory.com/thenextstation

Pimlico Station reimagined by Doug Connell.

"Listening to the Pimlico station set my mind moving. People in a tube station, crickets in a field, birds flying over, all this motion to get from one place to another. I cut and pasted a bit of the original sound and then played the audio back through a speaker, re-recording it on our farm and mixing those tracks together."

Part of our project The Next Station, reimagining the sounds of the London Underground and creating the first ever tube sound map. August 2016 - for more information see www.citiesandmemory.com/thenextstation

Euston Square reimagined by Clara Hollomey.

"Thy magic powers re-unite

What custom's sword has divided

Beggars become Princes' brothers

Where thy gentle wing abides.

Beethoven's 9th symphony was decomposed into 46 sinusoidal components. These were aligned in tempo, rhythm, loudness and pitch to the field record.

Similarly to the 46 sinusoids and the field record, we all are interacting all the time, behaving sometimes more and sometimes less concordant. Thus, it is sometimes good to remember the uniting powers of joy and friendship."

Part of our project The Next Station, reimagining the sounds of the London Underground and creating the first ever tube sound map. August 2016 - for more information see www.citiesandmemory.com/thenextstation

Bank station reimagined by Camilla Fanning.

"Despite living in Dublin I am surprisingly familiar with the London Underground. Like many from Ireland I visit London a lot and even lived and worked there for a while.

Bank station is right in the heart of the historic soul of London; around it are famous landmarks and memories of pivotal past events. Shakespeare, old rhymes, the Thames, The Great Fire, The City, the Blitz, Handel … and beyond. No matter what London survives and thrives.

As I thought about this project I began to think of the under soil of the city and all the history contained in it and began to imaging the tube train as something like a time machine cutting a swathe through this history, and eventually beyond these bounds and into the unwritten future.

And so the sounds blend an imagined voyage through time encountering historic soundscapes along the way. "

Part of our project The Next Station, reimagining the sounds of the London Underground and creating the first ever tube sound map. August 2016 - for more information see www.citiesandmemory.com/thenextstation

Warwick Avenue reimagined by Balint Barath.

"I am traveling on Bakerloo line, the stations are coming one after another. Warwick Avenue would be the next one but the underground keeps clattering and moving on in the dark tunnel. The velocity is growing while the time is slowing down. The carriage is completely empty. As the train goes faster and faster, a voice rises from the tube. The vehicle is gradually transforming into a resonant body. It is in a timeless state now and the trip becomes a large, outstretched picture."

Part of our project The Next Station, reimagining the sounds of the London Underground and creating the first ever tube sound map. August 2016 - for more information see www.citiesandmemory.com/thenextstation

Regent's Park reimagined by Ashley Elsdon.

""I wanted to make a piece that captured a series of ideas I had about both the station itself and also about travelling on the tube in general. Firstly I wanted the piece to be obviously about the experience of the station, so it opens with the announcer and a train pulling out of the station itself. The first part of the rhythm is made entirely from sounds from the station, its lifts and the trains. As the piece develops a second rhythm appears and slowly takes over. The rhythm is again made up of slices from sounds from the station but is generated from a stochastic sample slicer using a markov chain to both determine which slices are played and the manipulation of each slice. I wanted to introduce this level of randomness because of the often random nature of travelling on the tube. Lastly as the piece fades there is a strange noise element that persists until the end. This is the only part which wasn't taken from the original recording. It is a sonification of a historical photograph outside the station. I wanted to add this element and end with it to remind us that the station has a great history which is always there."

I hope that's the kind of thing you wanted. In terms of how the piece was made, I created the entire piece on an iPad mini. I started it on the platform at Regent's Park Station, and finished it there too. In its making I used the following apps:

AudioShare

BeatMaker 2

MultiTrack DAW

SECTOR

AUFX: Space

AlitSpace

AudioReverb

Dedalus FX

Virtual ANS

Final Touch"

Part of our project The Next Station, reimagining the sounds of the London Underground and creating the first ever tube sound map. August 2016 - for more information see www.citiesandmemory.com/thenextstation

Field recording from the London Underground by Cities and Memory.

Part of our project The Next Station, reimagining the sounds of the London Underground and creating the first ever tube sound map. August 2016 - for more information see www.citiesandmemory.com/thenextstation