Cities And Memory

"The field recording of a pedestrian crossing signal at Savignyplatz, Berlin, triggered immediately the memory of myself, in my twenties, living not far from Savignyplatz, learning to ride a bike as an adult. Terrified. Because I never had a bike as a child, my parents couldn’t afford one and where I grew up, bikes were for boys anyway."Translation of the text in the piece:Leaving the house, on Niebuhrstrasse, I turn right. I cross Leibnitz, Wieland and Schlüter. I reach Bleitreustrasse, turn left and keep going.I've repeated the route to myself several times. Not to learn the names of the streets that cross mine, but to keep my mind occupied. And not to think about the atavistic fear that makes me feel a hole in my stomach and makes me tremble all over.Because learning to ride a bike as an adult, at 25, is a frightening thing.Once you're moving it's almost easy. But there's the beginning and the end, and there are the cars and the car doors, and the dogs and the children and the stones and the pavements and

A ticking pedestrian crossing (with the iconic "Ampelmann" light) at a road on Savignyplatz, Berlin, with just a few passing individual cars. Recorded in September 2025 by Cities and Memory. 

"The street ambience was fairly intense and in Ableton Live I chopped and processed the traffic noises and played about with the pitch and timbres. A kick drum was used to give a primal rhythm to the piece and Absynth 6 was added, acting as a sonic glue. My idea was to create a soup of a soundscape."Traffic in Guayaquil reimagined by FFRWD. 

Traffic in the centre of Guayaquil (Chile y Aguirre), Ecuador. Rush hour traffic. Hot day. Recorded by Jean-Jacques Martinod.

"We all have experiences of storms to a greater or lesser extent. When I first heard the recording of the storm in the Moroccan Agafay Desert, I started thinking about the times I had been in a storm. From dramatic storms across central Australia, monsoons in South-east Asia or lightning storms across the sea at my home of Portobello, Edinburgh. However, I kept coming back to the storms I experienced as a young child growing up in Derby. I have vivid memories of getting headaches just before a storm came and then my sisters and I changing into our swimming costumes as the storm hit so we could run around the garden in the rain."To put it simply, I wanted ‘Children of the Storm’ to reflect my memory of these times, getting excited by the thunder and lightning, as first the wind would blow covering us with leaves and dirt and then dancing under the trees in the pouring rain getting soaked to the bone!"The field recording runs throughout the whole song emphasising the excitement and anticipation we felt as the

This is a field recording of a storm in the Agafay desert in Morocco. Listen to the sounds of the rain pitter pattering and the loud frightening thunder rumble, accompanied by birds tweeting in the background. Recorded by Jake Edwards. 

"What ultimately happened to flight KL1760 Bremen-Paris...?"You hear the flight announcement at the airport, but things quickly spiral out of control. You also hear a reworking of the sound in the Musique Concrete style. A reporter's voice covering an attack in Paris, cinematic sound, and music building to a climax. A lingering Big Bang strikes the listener deep in the ears."The whole piece was composed in "old tape style" using a few microphones, a homemade oscillator bank, a piezo soundbox, a trumpet, and a violin."Mixed and remastered in the box in Audacity and Fluss."Bremen airport soundscape reimagined by La Chambre Sonore.

Binaural recording of ambience in a mostly quiet terminal at Bremen Airport Hans Koschnick, with frequent announcements in both German and English. Recorded by Cities and Memory. 

This recording is from the beginning of 2025. I made the recording thru my open window, at the place I'm staying in Berlin (Kreuzberg neighbourhood). There are many church bells in this neighborhood. It's very distinctive to hear the bells in this area.Recorded by Kathleen Judge. 

"I created this piece using my Agricultural Terrains compositional strategy for granular synthesis. It seemed appropriate as the bells encouraged me to reflect on the historical and agricultural connections created through German settlement and its influence on South Australian viticulture. The work explores the distance between places, time and memory itself."Bells in Kreuzberg, Berlin reimagined by Alan Cook.

"The recording of the Sufi flute at Istanbul Airport immediately brought back vivid memories of the city, which I deeply love. The Sufi melody carries that magical and mystical aura that seems to permeate Istanbul in every corner and atmosphere, an air filled with scents and spices, suspended in time between an indelible past and contemporary urban modernity. Yet over the fascination of this contrast hangs a shadow: a search for peace and for a future identity often threatened by political and religious tensions that risk driving regression rather than evolution."In my reinterpretation through modular synthesis, the flute becomes a fragile presence surrounded by unstable noise patterns generated through the rhythmic modulation of a filter, while the flute sound itself is fragmented and processed with bit crushing and delay."Sufi flute music in Istanbul reimagined by Demiurgo.

Sufi flute player, playing live in Istanbul Airport during Ramadan.Recorded by Helen Copnall.

The jingling of cowbells, the bleating of goats and the whispering voice of the shepherd during milking at a family farmyard in Cercados de Araña, a living testimony of the sustainable living practices of a rural family from the area. Recording by Marina Díaz Medina, president of the Asociación de Propietarios Los Cercados. Part of the participatory sound mapping project "Voices and Sounds of the Sacred Mountains", by the Union of Associations of the Biosphere Reserve of Gran Canaria.

"My approach was to explore various parts of the recording through the use of destructive looping, granular synthesis and sequencing to create a layered piece that moves through aspects of noise, drone, tape loops and experimental. "The piece was live recorded on an iPhone with automation of some effect parameters, playing instruments and adjusting effects."Goat milking in Cercados de Arana reimagined by Andy Lyon.

"In the spirit of the original piece I combined it with my recordings of clocks and automata and music boxes, my daughter singing with pigeons, and an evening birdsong chorus in Aldeburgh to create a synthesis of the mechanical and the environment."Museum of Automata, Lyon reimagined by Mary Hooper.IMAGE: Rama, CC BY-SA 2.0 FR <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/fr/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons

A recording from Number One Court at the famous Wimbledon tennis championship as Barbora Krecjikova plays against Danielle Collins in a tense match. Krecjikova would go on not only to win this match, but to be crowned Wimbledon champion just a few days after this match. Collins 1-5 Krecjikova, second set, 8 July 2024 recorded by Cities and Memory. 

"I composed this piece using guitar and effects pedals plus Ipad instruments to create metaphorical sounds of bouncing, spinning, sliding tennis balls."The bouncing beats support the progress of the match even during the quieter moments as the players steady their nerves. The musical notes represent tennis balls hit with topspin, deftly dropped, lobbed or craftily sliced with varied pace all before an appreciative audience."Wimbledon ladies' singles match reimagined by Tom Thompson.

An archive of a Wander through the Museum of Automata, Lyon, before its closure in 2022.Among the ticking gears and rehearsed gestures, a choreography of mechanisms unfolds — echoes of human rhythm, routine, and repetition.Each automaton moves with precision, yet without pulse. Their silent labor mirrors our own patterns, written like a musical score of society.A dance of cold bodies, turning endlessly, until the movement stops.Recorded by Florent Picollet.IMAGE: Rama, CC BY-SA 2.0 FR <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/fr/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons

"“Distant Songs” was inspired by the field recording “Archive of a Wander through the Museum of Automata, Lyon” by Florent Picollet. I began my process by eq’ing and editing the field recording into three overlapping sections. The new track was stretched using Paul’s Extreme Sound Stretch and then processed and performed in Ableton. Lastly, Casio tones were added. "Museum of Automata, Lyon reimagined by Edward Ruchalski.IMAGE: Rama, CC BY-SA 2.0 FR <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/fr/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons

The slats in the Golden Gate bridge will resonate at certain wind speeds and directions. the first is a low-pitched + low-frequency tone between 280-700hz created by westward ~22mph winds while the second tone is of a higher pitch + frequency of 1.1khz created by ~27mph winds. This is the singing as heard from Lone Mountain, during a rainy night.Recorded by wwjd (Jason Talsma).