Cities and Memory - remixing the world
Summary: Cities and Memory remixes the world, one sound at a time - a global collaboration between artists and sound recordists all over the world. The project presents an amazingly-diverse array of field recordings from all over the world, but also reimagined, recomposed versions of those recordings as we go on a mission to remix the world. What you'll hear in the podcast are our latest sounds - either a field recording from somewhere in the world, or a remixed new composition based solely on those sounds. Each podcast description tells you more about what you're hearing, and where it came from. There are more than 6,000 sounds featured on our sound map, spread over more than 120 countries and territories. The sounds cover parts of the world as diverse as the hubbub of San Francisco’s main station, traditional fishing women’s songs at Lake Turkana, the sound of computer data centres in Birmingham, spiritual temple chanting in New Taipei City or the hum of the vaporetto engines in Venice. You can explore the project in full at http://www.citiesandmemory.com
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Podcasts:
This is an amalgamation of recordings made entirely within the facilities of CERN on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. Alongside a standard field recorder I also took a contact mic - the 'knocks' you hear are via the contact mic on various pieces of equipment that are on public display. These include sounds recorded from a particle accelerator pipe and various other bits of hardware from CERN's past including bubble chambers, an Electron / Positron Collider radio frequency cavity and a voltage doubler. We were lucky enough to visit CERN's antimatter factory where, with the standard recorder, I captured the sound of the various machines busy making antiparticles. Further audio was recorded within the Universe of Particles exhibition at The Globe of Science and Innovation - this is where the fragments of music and speech were captured. Recorded by Andy Gillham.
The sounds of metro trains from beneath at street level, E48th Street and Madison Ave, New York. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
Ambulance sirens resonate across New York at E46th Street and Vanderbilt Avenue. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
A soundwalk from 8th Avenue and 37th Street, New York, in September 2018\. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
Street entertainers, car horns, traffic and crowd noise in the iconic Times Square, New York.
Starlings fight and feed in Central Park, New York, as helicopters pass overhead. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
Exploring Chinatown in Manhattan, New York. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
Recording crickets, traffic, trains and helicopters in the High Line park near Penn Station, New York. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
The sounds of Grand Central Terminal at rush hour, New York. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
A subway ride from Washington Square to 2nd Avenue in New York, USA. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
A jazz band entertains tourists in the music zone of Times Square, New York. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
The travelling pianist known as Il Pianista FuoriPosto reimagined by Cities and Memory. Snippets of his piano are looped and effected, slowly buried beneath reverb, delay and tape effects, while a small portion of his playing is extended to 300 times its normal length to create a micro-drone underneath the piece. Later, multiple piano phrases come in on the left and right of the stereo field, jostling for attention as the piano piece completely transforms into a shimmering dreamscape.
Il Pianista FuoriPosto is a travelling pianist, who takes his grand piano all over the Veneto region in Italy, popping up in surprising places to perform for the public. He doesn't advertise where or when he'll appear, so it's a stroke of fortune to come across him and hear his wonderful music, as we did on this August evening in the Prato della Valle, Padova. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
Reimagined by Cities and Memory. The street singer's voice has a meditative, praise-like quality that immediately put me in mind of church singing. From here, I've constructed a stage for her in sound, placing her at the centre of a fabricated church service. The door creaks open, and the organist enters before playing a brief, droning introduction. The street singer performs her encomium within the church, after which there's a recording of me reading out a prayer inside an empty church in Worcestershire, England. The bells ring out at the end to close the service - the soundscape is constructed from the sounds of English churches, enveloping and providing a home for the Russian singer.
A singer on the steps of the 1812 Museum sings traditional folk songs on a warm night in Moscow, Russia. A competing saxophone busker outside Ploshchad Revolyutsii station can be heard in the background. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
