Cities And Memory

The March of Light 2025 (Ukraine Support Demonstration in Vienna)  This recording illustrates one of the crucial parts of the March of Light demonstration, which is basically a flash mob based on people showing and hiding their phones with flashlights turned on, which is then shared on social media to draw people's attention to the whole event, which is to support Ukraine in its war against its aggressor - the Russian Federation. The video with the results of this flash mob can be found on the Instagram of mrija_org. The sounds in the recording are people raising and lowering their hands, and also people talking, cheering and chanting the most popular phrase "Slava Ukraini, Heroyam Slava" ("Glory to Ukraine, Glory to Heroes"). Recorded in Vienna, Austria by Tomasz Buga.

"The original field recording captures a street choir singing hymns. I transformed this material by processing it into dense, evolving layers of sound. One layer stretches the recording in time and feeds it through the Elta Music Solar 42F, allowing the choral textures to dissolve into a shimmering, otherworldly drone.  "The result is a slow-moving, contemplative, and meditative soundscape that reimagines the choir’s presence in a new sonic frame." Ukrainian Easter celebration in Vienna reimagined by Thomas Haighton.

"The bird sounds of this recording have a particular cadence and repetition. It inspired me to create something that was more solid and continuous to accompany it. I created a drone composed of 4 sounds that intertwine with each other progressively.  "This piece contains a binaural base frequency of 3.2 Hz so it is encouraged to listen on earphones to get the optimum effect. The piece is also tuned to 432Hz. And I played a Erhu on top of it. I mixed it very wide for a very profound and immersive listening experience.  "I loved creating this ambiance feeling how it would be to be one of these birds living and flying through Asia.' Cat Tien Park, Vietnam reimagined by Tamara Montenegro.

Inside a sea cave on a Cornish beach, recording dripping waves on different surfaces and at different distances, onto rock, into small puddles and directly onto sand, while the roar of the sea waves continues outside the cave.  Recorded in Mawgan Porth, Cornwall, England by Cities and Memory, April 2025. 

Cicadas and katydids singing in Dingmans Ferry, Pennsylvania, 9 Aug 2013. This is a recording of the intense sounds of cicadas and katydids singing in the deep night. The recording was made using two condenser microphones in stereo array through a Mackie 12 track board directly to digital.  Recorded by Dan Bodah.

"Salt water reverberations and soundscapes are a daily and necessary embodied element of my life by and on the Pacific Ocean in Santa Barbara, Southern California. As a woman from Britain living in SoCal, I connect with the sea caves sounds in Mawgan Porth, Cornwall, England, being soothed and inspired by the rhythms, pitches, textures, and timbres of water drops, accompanied by the constant roar outside the sea caves.  "With Cornish marine sounds I have added my daily ocean soundscapes: slaps of waves on my coastal rowing boat; sea lions barking on bell buoy (slightly muted by the bodies of sea lions bodies) marking the safe harbor entrance; a train on the nearby shore; little Ourn, a homemade 18-foot wooden sailing boat built in 1931 by a 15-year old lad from Eling, Southampton, England, splashing through the waves at 5 knots in the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara (and low-tech wind sounds without a wind screen to reminder listeners that sail boats by necessity play with wind power).  "Perhaps these aqua

"For this year’s Autumn Project, I was excited to have the opportunity to work with a sample collected near my original home.  "“An Intense Calling” is field-recording-based piece based on a recording of cicadas and katydids in Dingman’s Ferry, PA collected by Dan Bodah. Growing up near the Delaware Water Gap on the other side in New Jersey, I was excited to think about both the feelings this recordings evoked in me, my memories of when I’ve heard the cicadas. I’ve combined this with my own recording of cicadas taken in NJ in Summer 2025 to create a conversation between the original sample and my experiences. I used additional field recordings that evoke my place-based memories, vocalizations on the lifecycle of cicadas, the idea that cicada sound can be both overwhelming and melodic, and potential conversations between broods to create the final piece. The title of this piece references both the aforementioned overwhelming experience of the cicadas and my own pull towards creating/capturing/manipulating sou

"As soon as I heard the drum recording, I wanted to do something with it in the spirit of break chopping/dj tools. I love lots of 70s/80s/early 90s straight sample flips & it was an unusual opportunity to try something similar without butting up against copyright issues.  "I chopped up the recording, added a little in the way of effects, and supplemented a simple electro beat.  "I enjoy listening to it, & for me it's reminiscent of weaving through the energy of the very same square with my brother in my late teens, over-caffeinated from the delicious coffee they served in the cafes overlooking it." Marrakech traditional musicians reimagined by Andrew Tulloch.

Possibly the most visited spot on Skye are the Fairy Pools, a long chain of pools and small waterfalls coming down from the mountains - a truly stunning spot. We visit after most tourists have left, at around 8pm in the evening, to capture some close-up sound recordings without the presence of tourists.  Recorded in Skye, Scotland by Cities and Memory, April 2025.

A video installation called "Ever Is Over All" by Pipilotti Rist (1997), at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin - haunting music loops over and over, while in the video the artist walks along the street, then smashes car windows using a model of a large flower.  Recorded by Cities and Memory, September 2025. 

An extract from a soundwalk around this water feature in Hyde Park, London. It’s an oval granite channel measuring between 6 and 10 meters wide, and about 50 by 80 metres in diameter. Water flows across a varied surface cut into the granite, creating calm ripple sounds, fast torrents, turbulent bubbling…  Recorded by Paul Wheeler.

Wuhan’s night markets are famously vibrant, but Changti Street’s night market recording was chosen for its contrast with the afternoon one, highlighting shifts in life’s rhythm and atmosphere. In this recording: nearby voices shift from passersby to seated diners, more stable; the next layer of pedestrians chat while walking, dynamic.  In the mid-to-distant background, restaurant workers and vendors shout, grills sizzle, loud exhaust fans rumble, and diners in narrow alleys clamor. The interplay of motion and layers creates a kaleidoscopic soundscape, starkly contrasting the afternoon’s constant flux. Recorded in Wuhan, China by Digimonk. 

"This field recording put me in mind of the anxiety and sensory overload one can experience in crowded public spaces like the night market the original captures. The horns of cars, beeping of cars and cacophony of noises from busy stalls are transformed into abstracted noises, barely legible as their original forms, and the voices of workers and customers come in and out of focus, creating their own music detached from the meaning of the actual words being spoken. "My reworking is an attempt to capture and distil those feelings into frozen moments, unnerving and darkly compelling in equal measure. The unease of neurosis and social discomfort can provide its own soothing familiarity for those long-acquainted with its presence." Wuhan night market reimagined by Rowan Allen.

'Since moving to London, I have been continuously tuning myself to the frequency of this city. "Melodies generated by four automatic systems based on different musical scales, field recordings, and my own voice sometimes connect, intersect, conflict, and harmonise. "Lost in different frequencies, I am still searching for a way through." Diana memorial fountain, London reimagined by Miya.

"Field recording of Pipilotti Rist's "Ever Is Over" performance piece deconstructed via various granular processes." Video installation from Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin reimagined by Scott Lawrence Whitman.

"This piece was made from a selection of time-stretched samples of gaps between the rushing water in the original field recording, layered and manipulated to create an ambient soundscape. I have had the pleasure of swimming in the Fairy Pools in the past, and was inspired by the uncanny and liminal nature of sounds and ambience when heard underwater.  "I particularly focused on the pseudo-vocal elements of these stretched samples, leaning into the simulation of ethereal laughter." Skye Fairy Pools reimagined by Helen Hawa-Diggle.

" Boscastle, such a beautiful magical place, set in a deep valley carved out by the river, with jagged cliffs covered in emerald & drifts of Sea Pinks & white Campion, where the sea birds nest. The buildings growing out of the cliffs in slate & killas. The slate slabs & cobbles trodden into forms of memories for hundreds of years.  "I was inspired by the Boscastle field recording because of my deep connection with the sea & the place itself. I lived nearby for many years. I was there at the time of the awful flood. My connection deepened when close friends I’d worked with creatively on the east coast journeyed down to meet me.  "High on the cliff path, a lone bench overlooking the harbour became a sacred meeting place for us for years afterwards. it was a spiritual experience & it felt like a magical circle or spiral of elemental connection. "I added one of my own field recordings of dropping pebbles into the harbour & seagulls on the wind for its haunting quality to complement

Light waves breaking on a stone boat jetty in the very small one-boat Boscastle harbour in Cornwall on a sunny August afternoon. Recorded by Cities and Memory, June 2025. 

"This composition is built from a field recording of a waterfall in the Lake District by Rob Parton. The waterfall has a broad spectrum of frequencies decaying and emerging; a metaphor for autumn: as each droplet’s resonance fades, new ones emerge, echoing nature’s descent into winter, its long sleep and quiet preparation for spring.  "The piece features a vocal sample of Karen McCarthy Woolf reading from her poem Conversations with Water, her contemplative words reverberating through this honouring of water and the transformative season of autumn. "Using the Torso S-4, I gradually transformed the raw waterfall recording into harmonic frequencies, shaping it into a sustained, droning chord that I then mirrored on my harmonium to form an ambient composition. I layered in a guitar motif to introduce a sense of optimism as the seasons shift." Lake District soundscape reimagined by Helen Copnall feat. Karen McCarthy Woolf.

"The original source sound for this piece was from a bat echolocation detection device. So in this sonic interpretation, I aimed to create the feeling of reaching out into a mysterious, dark space of unknown size or location.  "The timbre is meant to be muffled and imprecise while the musical material is deliberate and approaching Baroque. I also bounced the original source sound between various audio and music composition softwares, relaying the message and having it change along the way–similar to a game of telephone. The rhythmic patterns were all taken for the rhythmic patterns of the sonified echolocation." Bat detector in Witney, England reimagined by Janae Jean.