"My field recording was a cable car journey to the top of an old town. In amongst the hubbub of voices there was snatches of music played on a telephone. I decided to use the duration of the cable car journey as a start and end point, placing the listener in the environment, and planting the melodies and rhythms as if caught almost out of ear shot on phones around the space.
"The human ums, aahs, stamps and claps are the sounds of real depth, the passengers perhaps? As the journey ends we escape into the open air and our song is allowed to escape in full fidelity."
San Marino cable car reimagined by Douglas Barelegs.
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The cable car to San Marino
The cable car is the only sensible way to travel up to the precipitous heights of the old town in San Marino, which today is hosting a ComicCon-style festival for lovers of all things sci-fi and fantasy.
Recorded by Cities and Memory.
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The same today (Echoes of the Holocaust)
"The piece opens with Anders Vinjar’s recording of the stark ambiance outside Auschwitz's crematoriums. A voice notes a chilling continuity: "the acoustics are the same today as it was in 1942".
Holocaust survivors then share their stories, interwoven with supporting music. Abrupt cuts jolt listeners back to the haunting recording at Auschwitz. As the piece progresses, survivors' warnings blend with news clips and commentary, reflecting humanity's failure of "never again".
Vocals and music become increasingly echoed and distorted, mirroring the terrible echoes of history that continue to repeat today.
The piece closes with a plea from a survivor: ending hate and intolerance starts with each of us.
Auschwitz recording by Anders Vinjar reimagined by Music for Sea Monsters.
This recording captures birdsong and locals passing through a quiet public garden in central Mantua. The recording was made on the 29th May 2012, about five minutes after a strong earthquake had struck the Emilia Romagna region, causing significant damage to the UNESCO World Heritage property of the Cathedral, Torre Civica and Piazza Grande.
Recorded by Cities and Memory.
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 7,000 sounds featured on our sound map, spread over more than 130 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 www.citiesandmemory.com
UK