In the summer of 2019, while sitting beside a small unnamed lake/pond, which friends and I called Crater Lake (because it looked like a crater), I was attempting to record loons in the late afternoon/early evening. Instead, a beaver swam around circling and splashing about near the nest of a pair of loons and their loonlets, messing with them far as I could tell. Thus, we get no loon sounds but some reverberating beaver tail whips.
The lake itself was situated where I was sat several meters from the shore nestled in an almost amphitheater type setting, and the recording reflects as much (especially when listening with headphones or a good pair of speakers). The frogs, songbirds set the stage for a sound rich environment, and the beaver tail led the way, so to speak, or at the very least, punctuated the recording with deep bass resonance.
Hence, the playful title I attributed to the recording. I find the tail whip sounds especially unique and felt serendipitous I was able to capture it - sounds of the northwoods at its finest. It remains one of my favourite nature recordings that I have made.
Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest near Iron River, WI recorded by Tenali Hrenak.
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2:20
Two forests one museum
"We travel through many sonic landscapes. Lately, I’ve been flying back and forth from Massachusetts to Wisconsin to help my elderly parents. I selected this field recording from from the north woods of WI (a shared past) paired with my own similar recordings from the deep forest in MA/VT (a shared present), and a nearby pond at the Clark Art Institute.
"In a sense this becomes an ambient travelogue. As we age and travel, there are many delights and familiarities, but also many unknowns, so I composed this piece to be both lovely and a little ominous, performing bowed bells, percussion, and modular synthesizer in addition to the field recordings."
Chequamegon Nicolet national forest, Iron River USA reimagined by Gregory Scheckler.
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9:00
False awakening on a Mediterranean island
"This piece is a personal journey through the experiences of being born and growing up on an island with complex cultural, political, and historical roots. I felt strong connections and disconnections between where I grew up and where I lived afterwards, realising that identity and belonging can continue to evolve in subtle ways. Making every moment of interaction with the space and culture dynamic, as the individual affects the space, and in turn, it affects the individual.
"I primarily used the recording allocated to me for this project for rhythmic and timbral purposes. In a sense, the selection of the recording was both informed by and, in turn, informed the piece that I was composing. It helped bridge the metal and soundscape genres with its natural timbre and rhythmic qualities."
Fez medina work sounds reimagined by Berk Yagli.
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10:02
Medina workmen, hammering
This was recorded in Fez Medina in Morocco in 2008, I feel that this sound sums up not only the sense of place that one feels when inside the Medina, but it is seemingly a sound which defines temporal definition.
One might hear this sound at any point in the last 2,000 years, a unique soundmark, which also personally resonates with my own memories of that time in my life, the time in Morocco and also the feelings of hope and optimism for the future which seemingly seem distant in 2025.
Recorded by Neil Spencer Bruce.
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2:07
Isha call to prayer in Nabeul
This recording captures the "Isha" call to prayer in the medina of Nabeul, Tunisia. "Isha" is the night prayer, and is announced after dark.
Nabeul has two main mosques in the medina, plus other call to prayers can be heard in the distance. The presence of space is well recognisable due to the various distances of the different Isha calls.
Recorded by Colin Hunter.
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 http://www.citiesandmemory.com
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