Cities And Memory

The recording is from April 7, 2025 and was made at Lake Chiusi located in the Val di Chiana in the province of Siena, Tuscany. A small floating dock was chosen as the audio recording point. The banging of the dock accompanies the listening of the lake soundscape. It is the lake itself that, with its movement, 'plays' this dock. The random rhythm generated is grafted onto the very rich acoustic environment of the lake.Recorded by Nicola Fumo Frattegiani.

The day is coming to an end for the small port town of Cabusao, with most bamboo boats securely tied to the seawall bordering the makeshift and cement homes of the people to restless horizon of the San Miguel Bay. High tide approaches, so two biologists take a battered old tricycle to catch their boat home before the waves get too strong for their ride to dock safely for boarding. From the guttural sputtering of the old motorcycle to the bendy creaking of the rusty carriage, imagine the fish port moving past you all while sitting still. Recorded in the Philippines by Timothy Romero.

"The recording I chose was quite full on, noise-wise, but also incredibly evocative. It felt like a travelogue, and inspired by this and an old audio montage technique used by 'Bomb The Bass' on their debut album 'Into The Dragon', I decided to create a kind of jangling, noisy audio travelogue, featuring localised Filipino radio broadcasts, classical Filipino music, youth-oriented TV interviews, and a sampled, looped, heavily treated rhythm; all anchored by the fluctuating, almost synth-like drone sounds of the original sound recording."Cabusao tricycle ride, Philippines reimagined by Tazer McFictionzap.

"For this project, I've chosen a recording that was - very appropriately- named "Loud morning walkers on quiet street". Between other choices, this was the only recording, that made me pause to think about human nature. I became interested in its sonic layers, that oscillated between serenity and chaos. "My idea was to study this interplay, to dissect the parts and to re-imagine a new sonic landscape, where different rhythm patterns represented different textures of the human activity. I've used parts of the original recording as a background layer and, based on the flow of this layer, I've built four different patterns. The final track was played and recorded live with a digital eight track recorder."Vancouver morning walkers reimagined by Rin Kaseya.

The random summer sounds include bird song, dog walkers, a truck, a garden sprinkler and a cough. However, the event (7:28) is the loud Cantonese-speaking group of woman passing by on their daily walk – always around 9:30 am and always very animated! I do not know what they say to one another. Recorded in Vancouver, Canada by Emiko Morita.

"The piece is made up entirely of samples from the field recordings, chopped, filtered and mangled, with the exception of "Game Over". The overall piece sounded like a retro computer game. Further research revealed that the dashboard software on S-Bahn trains is Windows 3.11!"S-Bahn trip in Berlin reimagined by Simon Woods. 

An S-bahn journey from Savignyplatz to the Hauptbahnhof in Berlin - train sounds, doors opening and closing, announcements in German, September 2025. Recorded by Cities and Memory. 

"I transformed the original field recording into a more dronish soundscape and added some subtle guitar layers over it. The result feels like a warm atmospheric cinematic piece. I think the edit of this field recording offers further opportunities for more (de)compositions..." Lake terrace in Lummen, Belgium reimagined by Marco Vanoppen.

Recording of the ambient sounds on a terrace by a lake called "Schulensmeer". Noisy visitors, so almost none of the nature sounds are audible.Recorded by Lummen, Belgium by Marco Vanoppen.

"Taking the original background noise of a Columbian protest and treating it like a drone, but adding reverb and delay on certain higher pitched sounds within it, I built a reggae bass loop and drums with some dub effects, building to a more dance 4/4 track. The piece then progressing to bring in brass to reflect the carnival vibe of South America."Protest in Bogotá reimagined by Dubberrookie.

Binaural recording of a protest in Bogotá Colombia from my porch. Birds, traffic, protest. Recorded by Seth Power. 

The Rialto fish market in Venice is an incredible piece of history, dating back to the 1200s. Sometimes when you're in Venice, it feels like little has changed (other times, conversely, you're well aware of the march of time!). Once the fish market is close to closing, what we hear is the sound of workers shovelling up the ice and leftovers from the ground to be taken away. For hundreds of years, this has gone on almost every day of the year - with every shovel of ice, there's a piece of Venetian history to go with it.Recorded in Venice, Italy in December 2025 by Cities and Memory. 

The sample of the workmen shovelling the ice to cleanup the market space has this rich, raw, physical and rhythmic texture, and an overall flow from start to finish. It's a story of a changing states - and I felt like accentuating these changes  would be an interesting direction.Of course, ice itself changes state, and that sparked the idea to use various states of water - rain, frost, snow, meltwater, rivers, oceans, dripping, boiling steam - as the accenting elements to create quite a gestural piece. The source sample is left in place, and no effects are used on the various field recorded elements other than volume shaping (it felt like the piece itself was very raw, and did not need adornment).Venice fish market clearup reimagined by Warren Anthony.

 "I began writing this song on the spring equinox, so it felt natural to follow the sun.While writing it, I kept thinking about the whole cycle: winter’s quiet, spring’s return, summer’s abundance, autumn’s slowing down. "The same is true of day and night - we need both. "This song is really about rhythm: how spring only means what it means because winter came first, and how light matters because darkness does too. "Plants rest, animals slow down, people turn inward, and then life rises again. Follow the Sun is a song about the sun as guidance, but also about learning to trust the rhythm of life."I worked with a live recording of a jazz band playing in Paris, using a sample of its melody as the initial spark. From there, I wrote a song and arrangement that grew around that melodic idea."Jazz at Le Duc de Lombards, Paris reimagined by micca. 

Live jazz from one of Paris' top night spots, Le Duc des Lombards - the excellent quartet The Hookup (Geraldine Laurent, Noé Huchard, François and Louis Moutin) entertain us with a great piece. Recorded in Paris, France in February 2026 by Cities and Memory. 

The maghrib call to prayer at 6.45pm from the biggest mosque in Marrakesh, the towering Koutoubia mosque. Recorded in Marrakesh, Morocco, January 2026 by Cities and Memory. 

|Drummerrss "connects two operating systems: the idea of land, territory and borders, rooted in the ground, and the idea of a spiritual belief system, with a different set of rituals, codes and rules. Both systems are crucial to the formation of individual and collective identities. In Drummerrsss, the connection and friction between them evolve through rhythm and beat: this can be fruitful, but also lead to conflict." Large video screens across the space depict one drummer inside a hole in the ground, and another being lowered down from above on a suspended platform. The drum sounds reverberate around the space. Recorded at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Germany in September 2025 by Cities and Memory. 

"My composition for the Cities & Memory Spring Project, For Patience Joins Time to Eternity, draws on a field recording of the Maghrib call to prayer, captured at 6:45 p.m. from the Koutoubia Mosque in Marrakesh, Morocco. I was drawn to this recording for the haunting, resonant quality of the voice, as well as its poignant relevance to contemporary events unfolding across the Middle East."As tensions in the region intensify, the work incorporates gradually evolving synthesizer drones and layered textures that mirror a sense of mounting unease, while also seeking moments of stillness and reflection. The Maghrib adhan—the Islamic call marking sunset and inviting the faithful to the fourth of the five daily prayers—provides both a structural and symbolic foundation. Traditionally beginning with the phrase “Allahu Akbar” (“God is Greatest”), the call unfolds as a melodic and contemplative invocation."In this composition, the adhan becomes both source and metaphor: its echoes are transformed and extended, sug

"I really liked the reverb of the recording. Hearing the echos of the space and the sound of footsteps as people took in the performance was special. I took the recording and put it into Convology XT to use the space as a reverb and played some notes using DecentSampler and Vital vsts."From there, I took the sound and stretched it and added more reverb effects to it to boost the sound. Throughout the piece, the field recording plays so that the sound of existing within the space can shine. I loved the idea of utilising space as the medium itself, with the drummers existing above and below one another." Drummerrsss installation in Berlin reimagined by ellipses.

A recording of lapping waves from Serifos island, Faros, Greece, by Agapi Zita.