Cities and Memory - remixing the world

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

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

Episodes

Bellemar

November 24, 2025 • 4 mins
"When I listened to this beautiful recording of the Pharo bells of Marseille, I immediately felt transported to the south of France, which I recently visited and adore. The memories of those places surfaced together with the splendid sound of the different bells ringing over the sea, forming a simple and delicate melody. 

"This piece grows from that melody and from the sea itself, symbolising how certain moments in ou...
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A celebration at Wat Ku Tao

November 24, 2025 • 5 mins
This recording displays the sounds of a local celebration stumbled upon in the city of Chiang Mai. People of all ages gathered together to play music and dance, at a buddhist temple called Wat Ku Tao.

Recorded in Chiang Mai, Thailand by Jake Edwards.
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Daylight, Waorani Indigenous territory

November 24, 2025 • 19 mins
By day, high atop one of the tallest trees in the Waorani tribal territory of the Ecuadorian Amazon, the forest opens into a vast cathedral of sound. From this canopy — a sacred perch where countless birds pass by — the air vibrates with a living symphony. Wings beat the open sky, calls echo and overlap, and melodies shimmer in constant motion. Each branch becomes a resonant chamber, amplifying the chorus as if the whole canop...
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Amazonscape

November 24, 2025 • 20 mins
"Right from the first listen, I was struck by the sheer variety and strangeness of the natural sounds of the Ecuadorian forest. Some of them already seemed like electronic sounds in their own right. "

I therefore approached my processing by keeping the original recording unaltered and superimposing layers of electronic material that respectfully sought to integrate and blend in as much as possible with the original so...
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Chant d’automne

November 24, 2025 • 7 mins
"To create this sound piece, I sampled the rhythms from the field recording and turned them into a loop. I detuned it slightly. I isolated a fragment of the voice from the recording and altered it as well. With these two elements, I added synthesizers with heavy reverb and distortion. The whole piece sits on the edge of the industrial genre; the traditional drums become almost like hammers or hydraulic presses.

"Baude...
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Bells of Le Pharo

November 24, 2025 • 1 min
Recording starting just before 10:00. At 10, the bells of different churches start ringing.

Binaural recording with OKM II and Zoom H2n.

Recorded in Marseille, France by Patrick Petrossians.
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Sleeping on a starlit tide

November 21, 2025 • 5 mins
"As I was browsing the Cities and Memory sound library, I had an LFO patch quietly looping in the background. When the field recording Lonely Beach surfaced, it fell into place with the glitchy texture I was shaping, just like the sound of ropes creaking on a sailing boat at night! 

"From that accidental pairing, the track began to write itself. I took those two elements and let them drift together, along with scatter...
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The bird

November 21, 2025 • 8 mins
"Whenever anyone speaks of Auschwitz, I always picture the iconic Arbeit Macht Frei Gate; an image linked to the atrocities associated with the holocaust. I have never been to Auschwitz, but when I heard the field recording I was instantly transported there. I found the sounds so evocative and tried to imagine how it must have felt for those individuals who were taken there in the 1940’s, although this is ultimately impossible...
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Gentle waves on Lonely Beach

November 21, 2025 • 3 mins
At Lonely Beach on Koh Rong, the waves reach the shore in soft, unhurried patterns. Each swell rises and falls with calm consistency, a natural rhythm that soothes the mind. The beach is quiet and open, with only the sea’s gentle presence filling the air. It is a place of quiet retreat, where the sound of the ocean encourages rest and relaxation.

Recorded by Jake Edwards.
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Arbeit Macht Frei, Auschwitz

November 21, 2025 • 10 mins
Ambisonics recordings of the sound at the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate to Auschwitz-I. 

This soundscape-composition is part of the HEYR project, presenting 3-dimensional soundscapes from special locations, connected to special events.  Find out more by visiting https://www.heyr.no

Recorded by Anders Vinjar. 
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Trains overhead in Berlin

November 21, 2025 • 4 mins
Trains passing overhead on a overpass at Savignyplatz on a Sunday morning in Berlin, with light rain clearly audible too.

Recorded in September 2025 by Cities and Memory. 
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The thoughts between trains

November 21, 2025 • 4 mins
"The trains, from the field recording run, whilst the music represents thoughts of waiting for the next train and run between the train sounds. Some mangles train sounds appear amonst the music."

Trains on an overpass at Savignyplatz, Berlin reimagined by Simon Woods.
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Concrete ghosts

November 21, 2025 • 4 mins
"In the field recording, there was a conversation that felt like reminiscing. I say it felt that way because I do not speak the language. I loved the contrast between that dialogue and a shouting voice at the start and end that sounded desperate for someone's attention.

"The shout itself could have been anything, a chant, a protest, or even a stall holder drumming up business, and it truly captured my imagination.
...
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Yangzhou, Guqiting Street

November 21, 2025 • 4 mins
This intriguingly named street runs along a small river, perhaps now demolished and rebuilt. Once likely a standard six-step-wide street, it’s now a maze of residents’ makeshift additions, typical of old districts but still clean and tidy. At the junction of narrow alleys, elderly voices drift from homes, chatting over lunch in refined Yangzhou dialect, even more elegant than Suzhou’s. 

Residents shuffle by in slipper...
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Oslo bench life

November 21, 2025 • 11 mins
"The original field recording is sparse, with snippets of conversation, people walking, cycling and the occasional jogger passing by. I wondered how this would all sound if it were continually layered over in a continuous loop in the style of Frippertronics. 

"I used an experimental dual looper to capture and over-dub the original sounds, with each channel using a different length of audio loop. I then used a modular ...
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Ten minutes on a park bench

November 21, 2025 • 10 mins
Ten minutes sitting on a bench in Sofienbergparken in Oslo, just listening to whatever happens and letting the world pass by. 

Recorded in September 2025 by Cities and Memory. 
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Building a cohesive society

November 18, 2025 • 6 mins
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.
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Lush construction noise, NYC

November 18, 2025 • 10 mins
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.
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The hum of Yanchep substation

November 18, 2025 • 4 mins
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.
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Yanchep substation

November 18, 2025 • 4 mins
"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."

Ya...
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