Airport ambience, Los Angeles
Sounds from inside the terminals at the major Los Angeles LAX airport. Recorded by Marcel Gnauk. IMAGE: Andre m, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
3m May 19, 2023
3m
Wroclaw station - rush hour
"Railway stations always have a particular quality of sound. They are reverberant and boomy but they also have a particular rhythm. Artur Olejarczyk’s original recording made me think of all the times I have arrived in a new station, in a new city. I wanted to compress his timing into a more hectic mix by layering the sounds of the trains accelerating out of, and passing through, the station an...
4m May 19, 2023
4m
Spatial governmentality
"The only sound source is the provided sample. Transposed, stretched, sliced, filtered, reversed, cut and stitched. "A poem comes with the piece: "Localized globality. Scattered citizen participation processes. Cold commodification of the cities and subjects. Demonstrations. Surrogate actions. Privacy as spatial oppression. Be homeless, fear your shelter."" Oxford housing protest reimagined b...
6m May 19, 2023
6m
Atonal church bells, Sete Cidades
The church bells in Sete Cidades in the Azores ring out - they are somewhat atonal and out of tune, making for a less harmonious soundscape than you would usually expect from church bells - birds nesting in the trees either side of a path leading up to the church provide a more melodious accompaniment.  Recorded by Cities and Memory.
3m May 19, 2023
3m
Housing is a human right
A protest by the Acorn organisation on the theme of "Housing is a human right", Oxford, UK, July 2021. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
1m May 19, 2023
1m
песнь (chant)
"This experimental piece is primarily comprised of the original chant with the addition of an excerpt from the Russian folk song "Kalinka" and a few orchestral elements processed via tape loops and various effects." Amkar Perm FC crowd reimagined by Scott Lawrence Whitman.
4m May 19, 2023
4m
A fleeting thought, forgotten
"The recording was one of all the sounds that make up a reverent silence. I started layering that recorded silence, placing accents, finding sounds that I liked and started building from there, responding, first with piano, then other elements, to the sounds that I heard, and built the resulting track from there." Hallgrimskirkja reimagined by de Velden.
4m May 15, 2023
4m
Red Rebel demonstration (rtfct / Jeremy Sklad remix)
"Created entirely out of waveforms from the climate demonstration field recording and a violin; mainly using a sampler for some kind of granular synthesis. Messy, saturated, noisy, frantic; urgent climate crisis." Edinburgh climate protest reimagined by Jeremy Sklad (rtfct).
5m May 15, 2023
5m
Underground
"I remember the Paris subway with some fondness, from the time I was studying philosophy in France. The sound was mostly noise and clamour, and the busy hours were full of images and encounters. The field recording reminds me of the speed and the rush of novelty I felt as I moved through the city, finding new places and new experiences. There is excitement and anticipation in the sound, and I'v...
6m May 15, 2023
6m
Ravens 2023
"Mythologically, ravens are often tricksters. They can also be associated with healing. We live in tricky times and the world is needing a lot of healing. As I understand it, Bosnia has suffered from a great deal of conflict. I thought it would be good to let the calls of the ravens be a call for peace.  I used a lot of granular synthesis of the original ravens recording and added some kind of ...
3m May 15, 2023
3m
Red Rebels at Edinburgh's climate protest
On Saturday 12 November 2022 in Edinburgh, a coalition of climate groups marched through the city to demand Climate Justice in solidarity with the Global Day of Action called by Egyptian groups at COP27. Performances, songs and chants featured throughout, some of which captured via field recordings. This recording was from St Andrew Square and is of a demonstration by Red Rebels, a single bass...
5m May 15, 2023
5m
Inside the Hallgrimskirkja
Tourist moving inside the Hallgrimskirkja church, Reykjavik, Iceland. Recorded by Richard Watts.
3m May 15, 2023
3m
Metro to Chatelet, Paris
The Parisian metro between Hotel de ville and Chatelet. Door closing signal, the doors close, it accelerates, some people speak in the background, the next station is announced, the metro breaks, the doors open, I get out, some announcements are heard in the distance, then the door signal -which is cut short. Recorded by Dialekti Valsamou-Stanislawski.
1m May 15, 2023
1m
Sea at full moon (LA mix)
"For the production of this piece, I just imagined being by the sea, at night, with a full moon, just like in Diogo's original recording, contemplating the soundscape and the landscape and in contact with a state of mind full of tranquility. for its construction I used electric guitar and some of the many effects of Guitar Rig." Sea in Mahdia reimagined by Luis Antero.
8m May 15, 2023
8m
HoChiMixCity
"It is always a privilege to hear foreign languages. We are so lucky to have access to a rich variety of languages in our world. In languages that we cannot understand, our brain automatically listens for patterns and rhythms to try to interpret the sounds. Market traders also bring a musical magic to their phrases. This original recording is so rich with patterns and musical phrases I barely n...
3m May 15, 2023
3m
She landed on her pinky toe and she froze it (sketch)
"The fieldrecording of an art fair inspired me to think about the art world and the social event of an opening itself. A word to Text AI discovered some words in the mumbling. Those became the text line of my sketch. I call it a sketch because my goal is to perform it with a real choir." Madison art fair reimagined by Anna Schimkat.
3m May 15, 2023
3m
Traditional cafe, Tunisia
"I have kept the main chatter of the cafe echoed  and slightly adjusted repeats of the chatter and added some music to give ambience which I like to feel gives the sense of moving around the cafe." Cafe in Mahdia reimagined by Stuart Renshaw.
2m May 15, 2023
2m
Exploring the art fair, Madison
Recorded discreetly on July 9th, 2022 in Madison, Wisconsin, USA while walking though a crowed art fair using a pair of LOM mikroUši Pro microphones. Recorded by Daniel Braun.
12m May 15, 2023
12m
Street vendors in Ho Chi Min City
Banh mi SaiGon seller sound, Banh gio seller sound, Hot ga nuong seller sound and ve chai seller sound in Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam. Recorded by Maei.
33s May 15, 2023
33s
Symphony in celebration of the Montgolfier brothers
"A composition built around the concept of ascension, using a field recording of a hot air balloon ride. "At each blast of the burner, the balloon rises, and the composition responds by building in a new layer of sound. "The palette of sounds has been kept to spacious, airy synth pads, open brass notes and a colouring of piano notes and strings to communicate height, space, freedom and to vis...
5m May 13, 2023
5m
Love to lose you with me
"I really thought about the ambience of the original recording , the setting and what kind of memories it triggered. I wanted the track to be really earthy with acoustic instruments and singing. A song if you like. It reminded me of the feeling you get when meeting a fellow traveller, a kindred spirit, which, at the time,  seems so improbable in the grand scheme of things. The words came as th...
5m May 13, 2023
5m
Holy land
"The record brought a feeling of the ancient and modern synergising to create a blend of culture that attracts modernity towards it rather than fading. The processed recording acts as an instruments that blends with various traditional instruments from the world." Western Wall, Jerusalem reimagined by Wahinya Mwirikia (Riqi).
3m May 13, 2023
3m
Melodies and critters, Koforidua, Ghana
Repetitive melodious calls of insects in distinctive channels recorded at a roadside in the evening. Distant frogs, human voices, movements, autos and distant music can be heard. The beautiful melodies of the insects in the foreground are marred by loud entertainment centres near quiet settlements. There is however an idea to involve the community in listening to these melodies in archived for...
2m May 13, 2023
2m
Shabbat at the Western Wall, Jerusalem
Men audibly praying at the Western Wall which is particularly quiet other than the occasional shuffle of seats and prominent birds chirping at the site. Men and women are separated upon entry to the wall so the chanting men sound further off in the distance. Recorded by Rebecca Goldberg.
2m May 13, 2023
2m
City of imagined memory
"For me Alexandria is a city of nostalgic imagination, the dream of a lost cosmopolitan world. I've mixed the recording with "Voices," a poem by the Greek Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy, read in 1972  by the painter Yiannis Tsarouchis, and lapped two of the city's other languages against it like the waves. The French version is my adaptation; the English one  is by Daniel Mendelsohn. I am ...
5m May 13, 2023
5m
The children's festival
"The lingering sound of an event that one has missed. The manufactured memory of a person who has, in fact, failed to experience the performance at all. The text, spoken for me by Pham Jatabut, reads: I fought traffic for over an hour to get there how was I supposed to know that there would be construction? when I finally arrived it had ended all that was left was the debris of discarded foo...
3m May 13, 2023
3m
Mass bells (Andy Lyon mechanical breakdown reimagining)
"I couldn't get my original idea to create orchestration around the bells to work at all. So I used the rhythmic element of bells in a percussive way.  I created a groove with Shaperbox and layered glitchy, percussive and delayed bell sounds over the top.  It's quite chaotic at times with sync'd and freeform sounds creating variations in rhythm with glitch and stutter elements." Padova mass be...
5m May 13, 2023
5m
Christmas Eve mass bells, Padova
Mass bells heard at 7pm on Christmas Eve 2022 from multiple cathedrals at the same time in Padova, Italy. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
4m May 13, 2023
4m
Children's musical performance, Samui night market
A children's ensemble led by a teacher performs folk music at the Lamai Night Market on Koh Samui in Thailand in May 2017, Thailand, where about 20 children in festive folk costumes perform folk music before entering the market. In addition to the musicians, we hear people passing by. Recorded by Grigory. IMAGE: calflier001, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via W...
2m May 13, 2023
2m
Floß Fleisch Fluss
The original Cities and Memory sample inspired the creation of this work about ship wreck. Telemetry gathered from ocean buoys at the location of a well documented 19th century ship wreck is used to ‘notate’ the sound work, modulating parameters such as key, timbre, pitch, pan and velocity. Consider the telemetry as a field recording informing the creation of the work. This 20 minute version o...
20m May 13, 2023
20m
De laatste gans - wild goose chase mix
"I chose my recording at random. Upon looking at the title, I imagined a quaint parade of geese, being marched around a town, as is the custom in the ‘ganzenfanfare’ seen in some Dutch and Belgian towns…. I couldn’t have been more wrong… The goose here is suspended  upside down from a sort of gallows, with it’s neck well buttered, the  ‘ganzenrijden’ or goose riders are men on horseback who ga...
7m May 13, 2023
7m
Traditional goose riding ceremony, Belgium
Goose-riding is a popular entertainment game that belongs to the early medieval games of torment with animals that were then widespread in the countryside of Northwestern Europe. These games came in various forms, but at the beginning of the 21st century, it is mainly goose riding on horseback that is concerned. In the Middle Ages, the games were rather rough and a live goose was used. In the p...
19m May 13, 2023
19m
Sonata in Cb major for river and strings with modulation
"I started with the core recording and layered it until it was dense, before using the texture to inspire the chordal/ melodic structure." Neretva river reimagined by Michael Lilley.
6m May 13, 2023
6m
Birds singing behind the planes
"I used the original field recording and stretched it in several ways using Paul's Extreme stretch software. I also crop the sound in small samples to make rhythms with it and finally i processed it with a hardware sampler. Then I mixed the results with some real instruments, an electric keyboard, a flute and a melodica as well as some bass sounds and synths. The tiltle of the piece refers to a...
7m May 13, 2023
7m
Yellow-chested birds, Bermuda
A species of noisy yellow-chested birds in St. George, Bermuda. Recorded by Mark Wilden.
2m May 13, 2023
2m
The chaos of an airport, Denver
Ambience from Denver International airport, including rolling bags, security clearance, checkins, beeping sounds and the sounds of lots of passengers making for a very busy soundscape. Recorded by Marcel Gnauk. IMAGE: Peterquinn925, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
2m May 13, 2023
2m
El trono vacante
"This piece is a collaboration between Cristian Estrella (It Rises All Nectar), and the Catalan guitarist Javi Alcalá. It was composed in Carcassonne (France), recorded in Barcelona, and mixed and mastered in Plovan (France). "The original idea was to use the soundscape as a painting, with which different elements could be joined together. The birds, originally recorded in the Gatwick Airport ...
5m May 12, 2023
5m
çԋ⋀Иț
"Drums and voice are both universal elements in human music, which made them ideal to use in the context of the Void Sigil project. To mirror the hypnotic and hypnagogic properties of the original recording, I tried to lean into a more trance-like atmosphere in my reimagining." London Hare Krishna band reimagined by Angus Hull / Void Sigil.
4m May 12, 2023
4m
Devil's engine
"I didn’t have any preconceptions or ideas for the piece I would like to make prior to listening to the sound, as I wanted to avoid confining the piece within any predefined structure, theme or vibe. "Listening to the sound of the boat motor changing pitch, density and volume, interspersed by conversations in a language unknown to me, I decided to temporally stretch the sound, i.e. make it sev...
9m May 12, 2023
9m
Biodiversity at Gatwick Airport
Gatwick Airport has 75 hectares dedicated to nature and biodiversity - here we listen to linnet, song thrush and chiff chaff singing in the airport's western biodiversity zone. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
41s May 12, 2023
41s
Traditional red phone box in London
One of the few remaining iconic red London telephone boxes that still contains a functioning pay phone rings out on a weekday afternoon. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
1m May 12, 2023
1m
Hare Krishna band at the Royal Albert Hall
A Hare Krishna troupe performs in the rain outside the Royal Albert Hall in London for visitors attending the Killing Joke performance, March 2023. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
4m May 12, 2023
4m
Who's there?
"The field sample of the phone ringing but nobody answering conveys a sense of loneliness that speaks to me. The soundscape I painted tries to capture the feeling of life happening all around me, but nobody is really there." London phone box reimagined by Jenn Howd.
3m May 12, 2023
3m
Theme to insects, amphibians and voices by a roadside
"I took a few excerpts of the wildlife sounds, treated those, then built the music up with acoustic instruments and a lo-fi kalimba sample. I was aiming to create and then process sounds to complement the ambience of the original recording, which plays throughout most of the piece, and to add my own 'creatures' into the mix. That said, I just really like frogs. I spend a quantity of time taking...
5m May 12, 2023
5m
Wellmonster
"I chose this recording because it was made less than a mile from my house and I also visited the well during lockdown with my family - making the most of some bad times! I tried to add to the feeling of being inside the well, listening to birdsong etc whilst being surrounded by dripping water. I mixed the raw field recording with a half speed version run through the "Treemonster" effect in Bit...
6m May 12, 2023
6m
Bastille Market calling
"I love this sample of the Colin Hunter Bastille Market -- the sounds of the voices calling out is so powerful -- they're trying to create sales, and they're trying to sell food, so fundamental. Working with this piece, I time stretched it so that the sounds are drawn out as if they continue live for a time. I also chopped up the sample through an interesting M4L device in Ableton to give the s...
12m May 12, 2023
12m
Before and after the protest (Pancras station)
"The musical theme is based on the powerful cadence of the speakers voice at the Kurdistan protest at Pancras station in London England.The composition includes fragments of the every "day to day" hustle and bustle, to the tension of the protest and the lingering memories resonating throughout the space." London protest reimagined by David Leith.
4m May 12, 2023
4m
Insect and amphibian voices by a roadside in Ghana
Melodious and pulsating calls and voices of insects and frogs by the side of a road under construction in the Bonya community in the year 2021. Occasional autos, human voices, and light music can be heard far and near. Recorded by Samuel Kudjodzi.
3m May 12, 2023
3m
Pro-Kurdistan protest, King's Cross
A pro-Kurdistan protest recorded outside King's Cross station in London, 2022. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
3m May 12, 2023
3m
Inside the Alice in Wonderland well
Sounds from inside the well that inspired part of the Alice in Wonderland story by Lewis Carroll, recorded in the peace and quiet of the April 2020 lockdown. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
5m May 12, 2023
5m