Hospicio Cabañas at Guadalajara
Interior of Hospicio Cabañas, tourist voices with long acoustic reverb. Stereo 48kHz 24bit. UNESCO listing: Hospicio Cabañas, Guadalajara Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage
3m Mar 26, 2025
3m
Cathedral bells at Morelia
Cathedral bells at Morelia. Stereo 48kHz 24bit. UNESCO listing: Historic Centre of Morelia Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage
1m Mar 26, 2025
1m
Day of the dead at Oaxaca cemetery
Day of the death at Panteón General cemetery at Oaxaca. Stereo 48kHz 24bit. UNESCO listing: Historic Centre of Oaxaca and Archaeological Site of Monte Albán Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage
2m Mar 26, 2025
2m
Echoes of Petra
"The creation of this piece began with a binaural recording from Petra, Jordan—a place steeped in history, where the whispers of the past still resonate in the present. As soon as I listened back to the recording, I was struck by its depth and atmosphere. The natural reverberations of the ancient rock-cut city, the distant murmur of voices, the footsteps on stone—all these elements felt alive, ...
7m Mar 24, 2025
7m
Hagerty incident
"The source field recording is combined with found sounds and field recordings made at a 1965 Hiroshima anti-nuclear protest, a 1968 Tokyo student protest, as well as street performances and 'happenings' presented between 1960 and 1970. "Tobata, an industrial port in southern Japan, was often the site of such demonstrations and protests, many of which were related to the Anpo struggle (安保闘争, A...
3m Mar 24, 2025
3m
Butterfly effect: weeping and flying; llorando y volando: mariposas monarcas
"The butterfly effect: weeping and flying; llorando y volando: mariposas monarcas "What is the sound of butterflies? What is the sound of butterflies? What is the sound of millions and millions of monarch butterflies as they open wings and ascend into the air? What is the sound of zero monarch butterflies? "Monarch butterflies have been part of my life for over 30 years in two places in North...
7m Mar 24, 2025
7m
Tobata Gion Yamagasa festival
On a warm summer evening crowds line the streets to watch the opening ceremony of the Tobata Gion lantern festival. Several floats can be heard passing as they march through the town. UNESCO listing: Yama, Hoko, Yatai, float festivals in Japan Recorded by Thomas Martin Nutt. IMAGE: JKT-c, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons ——————— This sound is p...
4m Mar 24, 2025
4m
Petra anamnetic (binaural)
Petra Anamnetic presents a stratophonic acoustic mapping of the Petra world heritage archaeological site, located in southern Jordan. This locale has traditionally belonged to the Bedouin B’doul tribe, a clan that continues to play an eminent role within the tourist industry, which is of central importance to the area’s economy. The piece has been recorded ambisonically and rendered binaurally ...
7m Mar 24, 2025
7m
Monarch butterfly sanctuary
Monarch butterfly sanctuary, El Rosario. Stereo 48kHz 24bit. UNESCO listing: Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage
2m Mar 24, 2025
2m
Forest bathing in Kasugayama Primeval Forest
Hike a little beyond the main section of Nara Park in Japan, and you enter the Kasugayama Primeval Forest – also part of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara UNESCO site. If you are there during the off season and early enough in the morning, it is possible to hear the forest itself, as the monks and pilgrims of old must have done. This recording was made on 13 December, 2024 on the popular ...
4m Mar 24, 2025
4m
Soundwalk through Siena
This soundwalk was recorded in and around the streets of Siena in Tuscany. We begin in the narrow streets and end at the famous Piazza del Campo, the town's central square and home to the biannual horse race the "palio". UNESCO listing: Historic City of Siena Recorded by Colin Hunter. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous s...
4m Mar 24, 2025
4m
Migrations of people and birds
"The field recording reminds me to listen to the world around in nature and juxtaposed with the sounds of diaspora and migration, it captures the spirit behind the audio - of birds communicating with the audience and with each other, of light footsteps through a forest preserved in present day. Why are other forests not given the same status and how can we preserve the forests and rivers that m...
12m Mar 24, 2025
12m
Barrels
"The sound in my piece is made by striking the inside of an empty prosecco tank in an Italian winery. I created this piece using Ableton and wanted to make something that only used the original sample and no other additional sounds. I used the sampler and granulator to manipulate and edit the sound and then worked to create a short ambient piece that retained some of the character of the origin...
4m Mar 24, 2025
4m
Eavesdropping
"The field recording was interesting to me as it revealed more after several listens. It was a combination of louder, more dynamic voices/human/environmental sounds, and some much more subtle parts. It made me feel like I was visiting another place which I found compelling, and I appreciated the inconsistent sounds and spaces captured. In the composition I wanted to marry abstractions with more...
4m Mar 24, 2025
4m
Rattling chairlift on a hot afternoon
The "seggiovia" chairlift up to a rifugio in Pescul, in the Dolomites on a hot summer afternoon. The sound of the clicking, whirring chairlift interrupts the sounds of buzzing insects and light breeze, and symbolises the intrusion of human construction and entertainment into the natural environments of the mountains. UNESCO listing: The Dolomites Recorded by Cities and Memory. ——————— This ...
3m Mar 24, 2025
3m
Sunset in Naqsh-e Jahan Square
In the heart of Isfahan, Iran, the beauty of Naqsh-e Jahan Square comes alive at sunset, where the fountain glimmers under the fading light, accompanied by the chant of the muezzin in the background. UNESCO listing: Meidan Emam, Esfahan Recorded by Azadeh Nilchiani. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out mo...
1m Mar 24, 2025
1m
Green parrots at Khajuraho
Green parrots at Khajuraho. Stereo 44kHz 24bit. UNESCO listing: Khajuraho Group of Monuments Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage
1m Mar 24, 2025
1m
Inside the Taj Mahal
Tourists in the Taj Mahal interior. Stereo 48kHz 24bit. UNESCO listing: Taj Mahal Recorded by Erick Ruiz Arellano. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://www.citiesandmemory.com/heritage
2m Mar 24, 2025
2m
(re)membering and mending
"I was born in Bolzano, Alto Adige, by the Dolomites, and lived there for the first 11 years of my life. The first breath I took was from the air corralled by the lines these mountains made in the sky; here was my first light, colours, sounds, language. "Hearing the seggiovia reminds me of picnics in valleys with pines and snowy tops. And hearing people joyfully gasping on the moving chairs. ...
12m Mar 24, 2025
12m
Green parrot lament
"If you have never been in/around/under a large flock of singing, squawking, vocalising and flying birds you have missed an incredible immersive experience. It leaves your breathless, amazed, scared and humbled. You can lose all touch with your world as the sounds of bird calls and beating wings drowns out everything else. "As I read about the Khajuiraho temple complex, I began to think of the...
10m Mar 24, 2025
10m
Nowruz in Isfahan
"I have long been inspired by Iranian culture and particularly its music and poetry. Much to my surprise, my response to the field recording of the city of Isfahan eventually took the form of a kind of oblique word-picture, prompted by the images and themes which the original field recording sounds brought to mind, which I then set to the sound of a Daf percussion arrangement. One of the main j...
2m Mar 24, 2025
2m
Tomb song
"The field recording begins with a chant that sounds like the ones the Taj Mahal’s mausoleum guards sing to demonstrate the Taj Mahal’s acoustics. Its dome has been said to create up to 28 second of reverb. I’d heard this before because of Paul Horn’s well known album Inside, which featured a singer — a friend of one of the mausoleum guards — singing in a similar style, along with Horn’s flute ...
2m Mar 24, 2025
2m
The last shepherd
This is our friend Vasilis, the last shepherd in Mikro Papingo, and Iannis, his Albanan helper shearing goats. Mikro Papingo is one of the numerous stone villages found in the Zagorochoria in the mountains of north west Greece. After wintering his flock of 350 goats in the Vikos Gorge, living in a cave for weeks on end Vasilis brings the goats and their young back to the village in the spring....
4m Mar 24, 2025
4m
Street hockey at Les Invalides
On some unused areas of tarmac close to Les Invalides and the grand boulevards that surround it, by the banks of the Seine, there are frequent games of street hockey. On an earlier visit to Paris I'd assumed this was a one-off, but every time we visited again and went back to Les Invalides, the street hockey guys were there, playing what is surely one of the world's most picturesque games of st...
5m Mar 24, 2025
5m
Seven seconds
"I firstly loved the sound of the piece and the atmosphere of the Cathedral - the original sound is included fully, but buried in amongst the sounds of the remix. The way into the remix was the text about the seven second reverb and some research about the building's history. I knew that whatever I did, long reverbs and delays combined with multiples of seven in some sequences would feature. Ba...
9m Mar 24, 2025
9m
Players
"On first listening to the sound recording, the sound of the hockey puck being hit placed me inside a life size pinball machine. I felt drawn to creating the piece from the perspective of the players being inside a giant pinball machine. From there I began to build a set of pinball inspired sounds to entwine with the recording. "The soundscape was created using hardware modular synths to layer...
5m Mar 24, 2025
5m
Springcraft
"This track is inspired by both the sheep shearing clipper sounds and the season in which shearing usually occurs. During my first listen of the field recording, I imagined the ecosystem of handcrafting and repairing and was inspired to combine this recording with field recordings of my own craft, including whittling and sanding, use of a sewing machine to repair pants, journaling, and crocheti...
3m Mar 24, 2025
3m
Tallinn town square by night
A binaural recording made at 10pm in Raekoja Square at the heart of Tallinn's Old Town - we hear passers-by on all sides, restaurants and bars closing early at the end of a quiet night, and the church bells tolling 10pm. UNESCO listing: Historic Centre (Old Town) of Tallinn Recorded by Cities and Memory. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the w...
7m Mar 24, 2025
7m
Live medieval musick
Inside the popular medieval Olde Hansa restaurant, which specialises in serving original medieval recipes, a group of three musicians performs with replica medieval string and percussion instruments. Together with the wall paintings and candlelight, the ambience is as close to an authentic medieval banquet as you can get, while at the same time forming a very modern tourist attraction in the he...
3m Mar 24, 2025
3m
Westminster Cathedral crowd presence
This soundscape explores the quiet stillness of Westminster Cathedral - the sound of slight whispers and occasional footsteps echo amongst the airy spaciousness of the church. UNESCO listing: Westminster Abbey Recorded by Paul Virostek. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole proje...
2m Mar 24, 2025
2m
The bell of Reval
"The otherworldly voices and the haunting church bells drew me in…. I wished to be there, standing in the square on a cold Baltic night like a scene in a movie. Relying only on my imagination, as I have never visited the Baltic region, I was fascinated by these slightly atonal Estonian bells. How many times have they rung out across this square? How many folks have lived amongst them over the c...
2m Mar 24, 2025
2m
Fingers on fire
"The music heard mingling with voices suggests music for dancing, but there is nothing here to see. If this recording is found in an archive many years in the future, we’ll have to rely on context and assumptions that could have changed in the intervening period. "The reworking of this music creates “impossible” instrumental sounds, while imagining a different kind of dance. In the pauses buil...
2m Mar 24, 2025
2m
Echoic object 40
"The information age has produced huge leaps in the gathering and documentation of data. Someone who has never been to Westminster Abbey no longer relies on descriptions filtered through a commentator, whose powers of observation, agenda or eloquence are beyond their control. They can see maps, photographs, plans, reviews, recordings; access a level of detail unprecedented in human history. Pre...
13m Mar 24, 2025
13m
Morning worship, Christmas Eve
This audio recording, captured in front of the church in Christiansfeld, Southern Denmark on the morning of Christmas Eve 2024, documents congregants arriving for the 7:30 AM church service. The ambient sounds of gathering worshippers culminate in the tolling of church bells, before concluding with the closing of the heavy church doors UNESCO listing: Moravian Church Settlements Recorded by R...
18m Mar 24, 2025
18m
Intangible waters
I. Ocean furrows II. The liquid skin of story III. Island protecting waves "What are the living sonic expressions inherited from our ancestors? This question came to me when I read the definition of ‘intangible cultural heritage’ on the UNESCO website. The field recording I chose from the Fisherman’s Wharf in Santa Cruz in the Galapagos Islands, is, in the words of Josué Jaramillo, ‘a unique p...
13m Mar 24, 2025
13m
El botín de cada día
Imagine a sound canvas where tradition, life and nature are intertwined in a vibrant auditory tapestry. The Fisherman's Wharf in Santa Cruz, Galapagos, is an everyday symphony. The air is filled with the metallic echo of knives sliding on whetstones, a prelude to the dance that follows. The precise sound of the knife cutting the fish meat is mixed with the soft splash of the water that cleans t...
6m Mar 24, 2025
6m
Talking with the Tower ravens
The ravens are one of the most famous features of the Tower of London. Their presence is traditionally believed to protect the Crown and the Tower; a belief holds that "if the Tower of London ravens are lost or fly away, the Crown will fall and Britain with it." The earliest known reference to captive ravens at the Tower is an illustration from 1883. Having spent the afternoon around the Tower...
3m Mar 24, 2025
3m
Call of bells
"The original filed recording by Robert Cole Rizzi is for the most part a rather minimalist recording. We hear a faint breeze, the small rustles of people indistinctly chatting and walking along, all organic sounds lulling us into a peaceful scene. But then we get the eruption of the church bells! Enormous and arrhythmic, they seem to gather the parishioners into the church through sheer volume...
3m Mar 24, 2025
3m
Conspiracy of ravens
"I came across a legend about the ravens in the Tower of London, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The story says that if the ravens leave, the tower falls along with the kingdom. My composition, Conspiracy of Ravens, simply asks: what if those mischievous ravens are up to no good? What if they were able to pack their bags leading to the destruction of the historic site? "I loved the sound of the ...
3m Mar 24, 2025
3m
Noisy morning song
"The first thing that stood out to me about this field recording is that there is no real melodic information. It’s all street noise, most of it not of clearly recognisable origin. "Even though Dubrovnik is 4,700 miles away from where I live, in another country on another continent across an ocean, the soundscape is very familiar to me. Garbage trucks and ventilation units all speak the same l...
5m Mar 24, 2025
5m
Flavours
"I tuned into the soundmarks of place, the culturally significant sounds that if heard elsewhere might trigger memories of Obispo Market Havana for those who know it. Drawn to the rhythm of a shaker entering the conversation I wonder if it’s adding flavour to street food being sampled by the passers by. "While I can’t taste the delights myself I sample this part of the field recording instead ...
2m Mar 24, 2025
2m
The space between the eras
"The silence and absence was what inspired me deeply, like the resonance of air in space. It led me to some points where I was feeling the empty space as a non-temporal era, so I tried to add and compose some small scenes within the sound. "I was practising a bit of what's called a kind of archaeoacoustics, a way of imagining spaces from a historical perspective and with a bit of imagination. ...
7m Mar 24, 2025
7m
On the streets of Dubrovnik
There is a little window, in the attic of a Dalmatian villa from the early middle ages, overlooking the dreamy cascade landscape of downtown Dubrovnik. It's early June, 8 am. A melody of old Mediterranean terracotta roofs plunging into each other is nursing a soft morning light. The polyphony of ages embedded in the stone makes the town glow from its neutron core. No corners are mislaid, and t...
18m Mar 24, 2025
18m
Nea Pafos
The absence of noise becomes as striking as the sounds themselves. The deep silence within the remains and caves offers a rare moment of solitude - one that is increasingly hard to find in today's busy world. The stones, worn by centuries of history, hold the echoes of lives long past, but the quietness of the caves offers a rare moment of solitude, allowing for reflection. The recording evoke...
1m Mar 24, 2025
1m
Obispo market
Market soundscape from Obispo in Old Havana. UNESCO listing: Old Havana and its Fortification System Recorded by Jack Hyde. IMAGE: Paul Mannix, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out more and explore the whole project: https://w...
1m Mar 24, 2025
1m
China syndrome
"I based my composition upon the 5 note motif from the original field recording incorporated at the beginning of the piece and repeated throughout using predominantly Asian instruments." Musical instrument on the Great Wall of China reimagined by Scott Lawrence Whitman. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the world’s most famous sights. Find out...
4m Mar 24, 2025
4m
Dark bamboo
"I enjoy feeling disorientated sometimes; being exposed to sound worlds which don’t reveal their inner logic. The bamboo recording felt like one of those moments. "I wanted to take the rhythms of the creaking bamboo & weave something around it, thinking about nature, preservation and the encroachment of technology, as well as Brazil’s immense percussive heritage & influence. "The piece of mus...
12m Mar 24, 2025
12m
A modern reverence
"By integrating electronic elements with the historic sound of the cathedral organ, the piece highlights the tension and synergy between the old and the new, a dichotomy central to Vienna's identity. "The composition also speaks to the theme of sound preservation by emphasising how culturally significant sounds - such as the timeless resonance of the organ - serve not only as historical artefa...
3m Mar 24, 2025
3m
St. Stephen's Cathedral organist
As I entered Vienna's iconic St. Stephen's Cathedral in the heart of the historic centre, a service was just finishing and the organist was playing a triumphant piece of music. I particularly enjoyed the long sustain held on the last chord. UNESCO listing: Historic City of Vienna Recorded by Colin Hunter. ——————— This sound is part of the Sonic Heritage project, exploring the sounds of the ...
2m Mar 24, 2025
2m
Brief synthesis, integrity, authenticity
"In this piece, the monk's chanting runs throughout, initially heavily processed by various layers of granular synthesis, and very gradually revealing itself as the composition progresses, so that by the end all we hear is the naked simplicity of the original recording. "The composition represents how we often experience the beauty of World Heritage sites, at first overcome by a feeling of the...
6m Mar 24, 2025
6m