Cities And Memory

The busy building and streetscape sounds are granulated and diffused into the pulsing patterns of the Moog Subharmonicon, blurring human activity into a kind of civic harmony. These are the sounds of a society assembling itself.  Construction noise in New York reimagined by Alan Cook.

Lower East Side, Manhattan, NYC. A lively construction site with screaming saws, various impacts and machinery echoing off down the side streets near Essex Market in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. Recorded with an X-Y stereo pair. Recorded by Casey Danielson.

This recording is taken with an Open Wave-Receiver, a custom made foxhole radio modded from a Shortwave Collective design. The aerial was strung up to the barbed wire fence around Yanchep Substation; the electromagnetic pulse capturing an invisible soundscape, this community’s lifeline to the power grid. Recorded in Perth, Australia by Aliesha King.

"I heard the electronic hum of the substation and the chat from people near it. I supported the recording with a warm drone and proceeded to extract the harmonics and frequencies from the hum and chatter with the MakeNoise Tape and Microsound Music Machine. The improvisations were then edited. A copy was treated with postproduction effects, and both were then mixed together using my Agricultural Terrains strategy." Yanchep substation reimagined by Alan Cook.

A service at Sensō-ji, Buddhist temple in Tokyo, praying to Avalokiteshvara is a highly revered bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism, known as the embodiment of compassion.  The congregation are business men. Tourists pour money into the offering box drawing an omikuji. The sound of the money clinking is juxtaposed with the Buddhist priests chanting and ends with a discussion of the tourists visting and trying to understand the meaning of the sermon.  Recorded by Helen Copnall.

"I chose this recording because I’ve always been interested in reimagining folk music, and I’ve previously created an album that incorporates elements of Chinese folk traditions. The sample of Japanese Buddhist chanting particularly intrigued me. I noticed that while the chanting itself has a strong rhythmic quality, the background voices and environmental noise were quite messy.  "I therefore sliced the recording, altered its speed and pitch, and transformed it into a hardcore-style piece." Senso-ji temple soundscape reimagined by Sanki (Qianhui Sun).

"Inspired by the description of the experience by the collector of these sounds, Andrea Lynn, I explored this recording of a cold, mysterious place inhospitable to humans, yet home to arctic aquatic creatures who rely on the ice above.  "The original soundscape is highlighted throughout with frequency filtering only, and I created sparse added textures of echoing single lines of piano and nebulous vocals: alone, yet not alone."  North Pole ice recording reimagined by Heather Spence.

In July 2024 at 90° N my acoustic equipment slid into a hole 15 cm in diameter that our team had drilled into the sea ice. Midnight sun tossed shadows at the fog, slowing the wind just enough. My fingers trembled, but not from the frigid temperatures. I couldn't imagine what I might hear here, beneath the ice floes at the top of the world. Science aside for a moment; icy droplets blurred white and blue ice, and my headphones hung in my hand at my side. Awe and wonder gratefully stole time.  The underwater radiated noise (URN) emanating from the icebreaker that brought me to this place dominated the acoustic symphony for only a few seconds before geological and biological signals took centre stage and I listened to the otherworldly sounds of animals that make their homes below and on the crackling ice at the top of the world. As I listened, I wondered how life here was dealing with rising temperatures, with thinning ice ... with way too many melt ponds. Recorded by Andrea Lynn.

Fascinating micro-sounds from Coral Beach, when tiny, slow and quiet waves on this unique beach made of tiny stone, coral and shell fragments creates a beautiful "whooshing" sound with every pass.  Recorded on Coral Beach on the Isle of Skye by Cities and Memory, April 2025.  

Recording inside an open air vent inside the two metre-thick wall of the concrete bunker building that forms the Boros Collection. The space has a fascinating past as a shelter, a prison for political prisoners, and a techno and sex club - and now it hosts a conceptual art exhibition.  The sound captures both the muffled sounds of museum-goers on one side, and the passage of air and the sounds from Berlin outside on the other. Recorded by Cities and Memory, September 2025. 

"Taking Brian Eno's chopped tape ambient recordings as inspiration, I chopped up sampled loops of Chopin's 'Nocture C sharp in minor,' creating long and short sequences that I then initially synced, before letting them run in and out of time with each other, gently applying FX along the way.  "The field recording inspired this notion of a paid session pianist sitting amongst the chaos and noise of a grand museum, playing to no one, ignored and quietly letting themselves get a little weird just for their own amusement." Boros Collection soundscape, Berlin reimagined by Dominic Palmer.

Aboard a tourist boat from Loch Coruisk to Elgol, with different tones, speeds and intensity of engine noise blending with the sound of waves. Recorded on the Isle of Skye by Cities and Memory, April 2025.

A quiet and nice village besides Yellow River at Lanzhou City. QinQiang opera from the loud speaker in the village and this is very local sound. Happy birds are busy on working. What a wonderful soundscape. Recorded by Digimonk. IMAGE: Sigismund von Dobschütz, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

"'In Passage' was inspired by the field recording “Boat engines roar, Loch Coruisk” by Cities and Memory. I love this field recording of a tourist boat and wanted to enhance it with additional recordings from my library, including boat and shoreline field recordings, a contact microphone recording of a metal park gate, and sonic excerpts of other forms of travel: train, horse carriage and helicopter.  "The original field recording was edited into three parts, linked together and supported by my recordings." Isle of Skye ferry trip reimagined by Edward Ruchalski.

"I put the original recording through a bit of distortion, listened to it for a while, and then went over it with some text from my phone notes that felt like it fitted the original sounds. My practice involves extended vocal techniques, I tried to treat the original recording as a collaborator in the same space as me to some extent." Lanzhou City soundscape reimagined by Yol. IMAGE: Sigismund von Dobschütz, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

"This six-minute composition combines the Isle of Skye Coral Beach recording with my own field recordings of water and hands passing through shells of an invasive species, from Lake Michigan at Europe Bay (in Northern Wisconsin) near where I grew up. I've been developing several compositions about waves, and movements across geographies - the Isle of Skye beach recording was quite subtle and rhythmic.  "I paired these field recordings with overdriven, distorted melodics granular sampling of the recordings too, that remind, perhaps, of distant engines of seafaring vessels - a sonic memory-music of two huge bodies of water and shorelines." Wave on Coral Beach, Skye reimagined by Gregory Scheckler.

"I've never been to the Dolomites before, but a close friend was recently there. He showed me his photos of the mountain range and told me about the locals and hikers he met along the trails and in the backcountry. Seems amazing. His stories supplemented the original field recording in a way that enabled me to start working on the music.  "I knew I wanted to use an acoustic guitar as a key driving element for the feeling I was going for. I also knew that I would keep the original field recording unadulterated to provide more realistic context." Birdsong and insects in the Dolomites reimagined by Eulipion Corps.

Taking a break next in a pasture on a hike in the Dolomites, while we admire the view we can hear birdsong in the trees surrounding us and the gentle buzz of insects. Recorded by Cities and Memory, July 2025. 

"My first ever autumn was in Berlin and I also worked for a year in German train stations, so this field recording has an emotional weight for me. The title refers to unused train stations that were closed due to the division of the city during the Cold War.  "It means 'Ghost Stations' in German. For me, the memories of those train stations are like ghosts that haunt me during melancholic and nostalgic hours; this is what I try to capture in the piece through the lens of who I am now." Berlin Hauptbahnhof reimagined by 8110118.

A walkthrough of Berlin's main station, with announcements drenched in the huge reverb of the station hall, then the classic sounds of trolley bags, escalators, passengers as we explore this vast station and make our way underground to the U-bahn.  Recorded in Berlin by Cities and Memory, September 2025.