This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.

The project presents the sounds of 270 UNESCO World Heritage sites and items of intangible heritage – all reimagined by artists from around the world to create a brand new way of experiencing these spaces.

Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage

**The Message** is built upon a popular urban legend which has circulated for years about what was recorded when Russian scientists drilled a nine mile hole into the ground in Siberia, lowered microphones into it and recorded what they heard. This legend is known as the Siberian Hell Sounds or Well to Hell.


Art Bell, an American broadcaster who hosted a show called Coast to Coast AM about the paranormal and other phenomena during the 1980’s to the early 2000’s, popularised this myth by replaying a tape many times on his show. This tape was the alleged recording captured by the Russian scientists - a cacophony of wild human-like screams. The recording is now in the public domain via the Internet Archive.

In the late 90’s, a friend of mine in the United States, knowing that I was a collector of aural oddities, sent me a cassette tape he recorded of one of Art Bell’s radio shows in which Bell introduces the so-called Siberian Hell Sounds recording to a talk back caller to the radio station.

In approaching **The Message**, I listened closely to the selected field recording of the Am Markt Hole of Bremen and researched available information about the history and background of this heritage site. The Am Markt Hole of Bremen, is marked by a manhole cover outside the Bremen Parliament in the market square. When a coin is dropped into it, various animal noises (The Bremen Town Musicians based on a fairytale by the Brothers Grimm) are triggered and played back with the sound of the animals rising up out the hole. It sounds as though the animals; a cat, a dog, a rooster and a goat are trapped deep in the ground, distressed and trying to get out.

Thinking about this site, a hole in the ground and the character of the animal sounds within the original field recording, the legend of the Siberian Hell Sounds came to mind. Apart from the sounds of the animals, two other sounds from the field recording attracted my attention and were used in **The Message**; the metallic, machine-like sound of a coin dropping into the manhole slot and a short, excited yet eerie scream or whistle from what sounds like a child or bird in the surrounding market square.

What you hear in the original Siberian Hell Sounds recording are only the human-like screams. There is no other aural context, before or after to the alleged sound recording provided. I wanted to extend this urban legend into a sonic narrative by imagining and providing some context around it. In **The Message**, the listener eavesdrops on an expedition of Russian-speaking men, talking and walking through the snow to the site of the hole. They start up heavy machinery to continue the digging, break through the rock and then lower a microphone down into the hole. When the microphone reaches its length, it picks up the sounds of horror, in this case the animals of the Am Markt Hole of Bremen and other voices buried deep below.

I incorporated a number of royalty-free sound samples to flesh out the sound narrative such as the sound of walking through snow, Russian voices, wind, heavy machinery, falling rocks, etc. 
To provide an extra twist, I imagined this recording being left on someone’s answering machine to pick up later, anticipating their horror at what they had just listened to coming from the machine’s speaker.

HEADPHONES RECOMMENDED

Kenneth Lyons 
March 2025

Someone mentioned to me once that they thought ‘the money track’ on albums was usually Track 3. A cursory glance over some albums suggest that that may be the case. But there is something about the thrill of dropping the stylus and having Track 1 jump out the gates with all its bluster and swag. A great opening track has always done wonders to get me itchin’, twitchin’, jumpin’ and howling at the moon! For those playing at home, here is Volume 3 of some of my favourite Side 1 Track1’s. From The Cars to Bobbie Gentry to The Fall to Pavlov's Dog, a great opening song doesn’t discriminate in my digs.

For the : Cities and Memory Sounding Nature project is the biggest ever global exploration of the beautiful sounds of nature, covering 55 countries with almost 500 sounds. The sounds have been reimagined by 250 artists to reflect upon the damage being done to our natural world by human-generated sounds.

https://citiesandmemory.com/sounding-nature/

The file selected for me was chosen at random (003 CAMBODIA SiemReap_NightSound_AnimalSound_Locust recorded by Marcel Gnauk). When Stuart sent me title/file number, I was very keen to hear the recording though I was not at all expecting to hear the sounds I was to hear in it.

Having developed tinnitus over the past year, I have often described the sound I hear to folk when the tinnitus is peaking as ‘like having a plague of locusts buzzing and panning around in my head”. Oh the irony … and the challenge!

The original sound recording I was allocated to work with is predominately 5 mins of locusts making a racket of static with only three moments of a clearly discernible human presence in the landscape : a car passing, a plane passing overhead and a short burst of male voices. Those three human/mechanical sound elements, distinct as they are from the hiss of the locusts was where I began this composition.

My first attempt to develop a sound piece for this project was firmly in the realm of ‘ambient’ with an intention to smooth out and sweeten the locust static to counter the ever present sound of my tinnitus by using a range of effects in my DAW. It worked. However, in the last few seconds of the original file, there is a sound of what may be a cart going over a wooden bridge. The ‘clunkiness’ of this moment inspired me to bring some beats into the piece. I cut up these ‘clunks’ and constructed some intricate rhythmic patterns which form the drum patterning and some of the, what I call, ‘blip phrases’ which are peppered throughout this final mix of ‘CAMBODIMENTS’.

All the sounds heard, including the beats are sourced from the original sound recording and put through a myriad of effects. No external or proprietary sounds or beats are employed.

Kenneth Lyons (2018)

The Smithsonian Treasures project sees sound artists and musicians all over the world producing a series of compositions inspired by individual works from the Smithsonian collection, the world’s largest museum complex – reimagining images and scenes of history, art, science and culture through sound.

https://citiesandmemory.com/smithsonian/

**Valentino : Pale Hands, Where Are You Now? **

The sepia-toned, high contrast 1925 photo portrait of silent movie star, Rudolph Valentino by renowned studio glamour photographer, Russell Ball, depicts a mid-shot Valentino, in profile, in a suit of the day looking beyond the frame in a fixed gaze. In his right hand, he holds a pipe, posed and in pause. The high contrast lighting employed throws a silhouette of the pipe in his hand onto his suit and casts a solid shadow behind him providing contrast and foregrounding to his light coloured suit. The jawline of the actor is strengthened and heightened by this attention to light and shadow. With this fixed gaze, carefully positioned posture and the elegant but firm manner in which his hand holds the pipe, this is portrait of contrasts - not only in studio technique but also in perception.

The photographer’s approach to the portrait convey a masculine strength in the sitter; a quality that wasn’t afforded him by many of his critics of the day (mostly white American males) who found Valentino’s dandy-like style in his attention to dress, his performance style as a romantic lead on the screen and perhaps, his Italo heritage cast as the Latin Lover, somewhat of a threat to notions of the all-American male. An actor like Wallace Reid or Douglas Fairbanks in style and public persona, both screen contemporaries of Valentino’s, he was not!

In 1923, while on strike from his studio and out of work, Valentino delved into the occult and Spiritualism, a fashion for the time and penned and published a slim volume of poems called, ‘DayDreams’. It was claimed by his ex-wife, costume designer, Natasha Rambova shortly after Valentino’s sudden death in 1926, that he wrote those ‘psychic’ poems while in a state of trance, communicating with his spirit guides and other writers who had passed. Also in 1923, Valentino recorded and released a popular song of the day, ‘Kashmiri Song’ backed by ‘El Relicario’. The lyrics of ‘Kashmiri Song’ were based on a 1901 poem, ‘The Garden of Kama’ by Adela Florence Nicolson aka Laurence Hope. These are the only two known recordings of the silent screen star’s voice. Both recordings have now entered the public domain. https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/rudolph-valentino-1923

My creative response to the Russell Ball portrait of Valentino, is to explore its contrasts as outlined above; the shadows, the light, the ambiguous personification of its sitter. I was also particularly drawn to the strength projected in, yet elegant handling of the pipe. In thinking about sonic textures and contrasts and curious as to whether any voice recordings of Valentino existed, I chanced upon ‘Kashmiri Song’. Listening to it and looking at the portrait, one lyric, “pale hands I loved” resonated immediately. Familiar with the story of Valentino and his ‘psychic poems’, I was inspired to create an invocation, a sonic seance of sorts calling on the spirit of Rudolph Valentino. The line, “where are you now” felt like the missing piece of a creative puzzle and the right fit for the medium of this sonic seance. With ‘Kashmiri Song’ now in the public domain, I decided to use only elements of this recording as the source for all of the sounds in my response, “Valentino : Pale Hands, Where Are You Now?”. The sound piece needed to respond to the idea of contrasts perceived in the original photograph. To this end, I maintained some of the grit and scratch contained in the original recording and employed extensive processing and sampling of the source recording to construct a lush, romantic and nostalgic reverie of tones and beats with which to play against its raw and scratchy artifacts; its light and dark.

Kenneth Lyons 2020

Part of the Inferno project to imagine and compose the sounds of Dante’s Hell, marking the 700th anniversary of The Divine Comedy. To find out more, visit http://www.citiesandmemory.com/inferno

**A Slow Hot Kiss of Wind** addresses the elemental environment in the zone of the Lustful into which Dante enters early into his journey. It is an environment where classical figures, “those dames and knights of antique days” such as Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Achilles, Paris and others are tossed back and forth in a violent wind as a form of punishment for giving over to the sin of Lust and their base transgressions. Three beasts block Dante’s path before he enters deeper into the the circles of Hell with a leopard, the leopard of Lust being the first he encounters. Once past the leopard, Dante witnesses these classical figures of Lust tossed in the winds yet encounters one, Francesca da Rimini whose story of a chaste and pure love bewitches him. A kiss between them according to one interpretation, is an act of innocent passion and desire which moves Dante along deeper into the circles and propels his journey.

My interpretation uses sound samples of latter day and contemporary sirens/studs such as Madonna, Britney, Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman, Mae West, Michael Douglas, Barry White, Barbra Stanwyck and others as the lustful and classical figures from antiquity and sets them in the mix, swirling, appearing and disappearing in the winds, teasing and taunting Dante. Eartha Kitt’s signature purr turns into a growl as the leopard of Lust in the beginning of the work and Marilyn Monroe appears as Francesca da Rimini relating a tale of innocence and desire before bestowing the “kiss” from her song, ‘I Wanna be Loved By You’ upon Dante in the final moments of the piece.

This work was included on the Bandcamp compilation Inferno : https://citiesandmemory.bandcamp.com/album/inferno

Kenneth Lyons (2020)

for Cities and Memory Spring project : https://citiesandmemory.com/sound-map/

The original field recording : Old Souks Night Market, Aswan, Egypt recorded by Rafael Diogo : is the the sound of a busy and chaotic market with traders calling out, pedestrian and vehicle sounds punctuated by either a radio or live performance of traditional song which is captured as the recordist moves through the space. On listening, there seems to be eight or nine distinct ‘zones’ or areas of particular sound which are blended as the recordist travels : at first the sound is in the distance, then as the recordist moves closer into the area it takes focus then as they leave, its traces fall away as the next sound area or zone comes closer into focus and so on. My intention behind this reworking is to maintain this sense of movement/travelling through the space and to remain faithful to the duration of the original recording using only sounds found in the original file within the finished rework.

I identified the eight/nine key areas and put each through some extensive processing to obliterate as much as I could the chaos : rendering them as distinct ambient washes and repetitive drones. In a sense, flipping the script on this chaos and turning it into a different sonic experience for the finished rework, Egyptian Market / Nightmoves. I kept the order of these ‘zones’ as they are in the original sound file and overlapped each top and tail to create the effect of moving through the ambient space. Three distinct voices; a male voice of a trader calling out, a boys voice and a female vocalist singing are clearly heard in the original file. These voices are processed and multi-tracked as a choir that appears and disappears throughout the duration of the rework. As the piece moves to the end, some of the processing falls away to reveal some of the original source material. **Egyptian Market : Nightmoves** begins and ends with a call, its source being the call identified as one of the male traders from the original sound file.

Kenneth Lyons

June 2024

Dame Joan Sutherland goes to Mulholland Drive

Another instalment in an ongoing series of some favourite selections from various tv/movie/stage soundtracks and dialogue - remixed and reimagined.

SOUNDSTRIPE Vol. 6 features tracks/dialogue from : #TouchOfEvil #RoboCop #MulhollandDrive #AmericanBeauty #TheDevils #Harlots #LesGarçonSauvages #Dark #AmericanHorrorStoryCoven #FellinisCasanova #DieGlasharmonika #Poison #TheAndromedaStrain #FunnyLady #TheRevenant #TheGirlWithTheDragonTattoo #TheShapeOfWater #ThreeBillboardsOutsideEbbingMissouri #Joanna #TheMotorcycleDiaries #Blue #BramStokersDracula

Composers : #HenryMancini #PedroBromfman #ThomasNewman #RaelJones #HeklaMagnúsdóttir #BenFrost #BenJaffe #AlfredSchnittke #GilMelle #HarryAkst #GrantClarke #BryceDessner #TrentReznor #AtticusRoss #AlexandreDesplat #CarterBurwell #GustavoSantaolalla #SimonFisherTurner #WojciechKilar

Dialogue/Voices by : #NaomiWatts #LauraHarring #VanessaRedgrave #AlanBates #JamesDean #NatalieWood #NigelTerry #MichaelCooke #PatrickFischler #DonaldSutherland #CicelyBrowne #LarryMaxwell #EdithMeeks #GenevieveWaite #BarbraStreisand

#soundtrack #cinema #theatre #stage #musicals #film

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music2bubble'n'squeak2