Old cash register
Recording provided by Dan AudioFile via Freesound. Old cash-register open and close the sound of successful sale played a few times, little background sounds from the street nearby but rather clean. Recorded using pair of cardoid condensers X/Y This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and ...
15s Aug 19, 2022
15s
Printing press machine
Recording provided by Disaster Services via Freesound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
2m Aug 19, 2022
2m
Herääminen
Composition by Arvik Torrenssen. "Herääminen (meaning "awakening") reimagines this recording of the Elliott 903 Boot Sequence from the TNMOC Imitation Archive from the perspective of this early computer era data processing machine (interactive input/output was normally handled by an attached teletype machine) moving from this initial awakening sequence through evolution to modern computer age ...
6m Aug 18, 2022
6m
Morse code and number stations
Composition by Scott Lawrence Whitman. "I tuned the original Morse Code for letters A through G to their respective musical notes, recorded them in sequence, combined them with several number station broadcasts and processed the results." This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagi...
3m Aug 18, 2022
3m
Modem life is rubbish!
Composition by Audio Obscura. "I'm old enough to remember modem dialups when I first got online in the late 90s so this was a pleasure to hear the sound of a dial up again! The random beeps and noises of such a song suggested something quite abrasive to me so I took the original sounds and added some effects and created a noise piece originally but I wasn't happy with it. I isolated so of thes...
6m Aug 18, 2022
6m
Máquina Americana
Composition by Lucy Newton. "The original recording contained a stationary engine of a vintage car that inspired me to create a piece about classic cars in Cuba. Due to the Cuban political system, citizens have had to use their passion and resourcefulness to maintain these vehicles as they are not allowed to purchase imported American cars and parts. "Although these cars lack modern technolog...
3m Aug 18, 2022
3m
Cipher
Composition by Gregory Kramer. "As the inspiration for this soundwork of obsolete sounds I chose a recording labeled "Heath Robinson". Curious to know what the sound came from, I did an internet search and learned that W. Heath Robinson was an English cartoonist whose fanciful illustrations of elaborate contraptions preceded Rube Goldberg. However, this didn't tell me what the recording I had ...
5m Aug 18, 2022
5m
War machines
Composition by XXXXX. ""War machines" uses a single recording of the 1939 Bombe computer, recorded by Matt Parker of The Imitation Archive in 2015. The Bombe was devised by Alan Turing and associates at the UK Government Code and Cypher School and used at Bletchley Park to decipher enemy codes. "This recording serves as the basis for a composition comprised of wartime radio broadcasts, occupi...
4m Aug 18, 2022
4m
Colossus 101
Recording provided by Duncan Whitledge. "I really enjoyed the industrial rhythms I could hear in the original recording.  They were in a sort of beat but felt "off" in a way which I liked a lot.  During the initial covid lockdown in NYC is when I started getting into synths and I am still very much a novice but I really enjoy making these kinds of sounds.  I also really enjoy brevity from my t...
2m Aug 18, 2022
2m
Modem dialup
Recording provided by Marcus Horndt via Freesound. I recorded the dial process of the modem in my powerbook. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
41s Aug 18, 2022
41s
At the Malvern Autumn Show
Recording provided by Nick St. George. Stationery engines recorded at the Malvern Autumn Show 2021, a display of vintage stationary engines at full throttle! Unfortunately I only had my phone with me, so this is a mono recording. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to cr...
1m Aug 18, 2022
1m
Heath Robinson (Sequence)
Recording provided by Matt Parker / The Imitation Archive. Boot and running sequence of the Heath Robinson. Year of manufacture: 1943. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/ob...
3m Aug 18, 2022
3m
Elliott 903 (Boot Sequence and Tape Spool)
Recording provided by Matt Parker / The Imitation Archive. Boot sequence and a repeated mounting of tape reader tape spool followed by processing of paper tape data message. Year of manufacture: 1965 This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of liste...
2m Aug 18, 2022
2m
Colossus Start Sequence
Recording provided by Matt Parker / The Imitation Archive. Boot Sequence of Colossus. DPA stereo mix located close to the tape mechanism and motor with MKH416 located near main relay board. Manually fading between the two configurations for dramatic illustration. Year of manufacture: 1944 This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and so...
4m Aug 18, 2022
4m
The Morse Code alphabet
Recording provided by Skibka Music via Freesound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
2m Aug 18, 2022
2m
Bombe (Full Sequence)
Recording provided by Matt Parker / The Imitation Archive. Coincident Stereo Recording of inside the opened rear panel of the Bombe performing the standard calculation sequence setup by the Bombe engineers for daily park demonstrations. The back panel is open and the microphones are placed just in front of the mechanical features. Year of manufacture: 1939 This is part of the Obsolete Sounds ...
6m Aug 18, 2022
6m
VR550
Composition by Andy Lyon. "I remember when video recorders were the height of technology.  There was always excitement when we got a new one, followed by studying the manual to try and figure out how to use it. Of course they were often particularly noisy, didn't always record the programs and there was the odd tape that got jammed. I located the user manual on the internet and used text to sp...
6m Aug 18, 2022
6m
That dark point where everything swings
Composition by XXXXX. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
7m Aug 18, 2022
7m
WM-EX35
Composition by claro correcto. "WM-EX35 captures my nostalgia for personal stereos and uses sections of the original recording to convey the mechanical action of switching between tracks, coupled with the lo-fi quality of mix tapes; intentional flaws retained to reflect chewed sections of re-spooled tape.  The overhearing of snatched conversations and the faint inkling of leaked music emanatin...
4m Aug 18, 2022
4m
On my deathbed I'll remember the Contra code
Composition by Toledo the Horse. "I like taking sounds out of context and seeing what I can do with them. The pieces I've made that I'm most happy with are usually the ones that sound very little like what I had in my head at the beginning. But I do usually listen for some sort of note, or scrap of a melody. I thought I heard something close to a note in the creaking sound of (I'm assuming) th...
10m Aug 18, 2022
10m
Galloping Walkman harmony
Composition by Nick Yulman. "Listening to the recording of this a vintage Sony Walkman playing a blank tape, rewinding, and fast forwarding, I was interested in the galloping rhythms that emerged from the motor -- the music of the device itself. To enhance this and bring out different elements of the sound, I looped sections of it, adding a different pitch-shifted harmony with each iteration. ...
3m Aug 18, 2022
3m
Nintendo NES game console
Recording provided by Conserve The Sound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
50s Aug 18, 2022
50s
Philips VR 550 video recorder
Recording provided by Conserve The Sound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
49s Aug 18, 2022
49s
Sony WM-32 personal stereo
Recording provided by Conserve The Sound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
43s Aug 18, 2022
43s
Sony WM-EX 116 personal stereo
Recording provided by Conserve The Sound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
41s Aug 18, 2022
41s
Recsi weighing scales
Recording provided by Conserve The Sound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
12s Aug 18, 2022
12s
Tape conversions
Composition by Kitty (Speed for Lovers). "I loved all the different textures in the original recording, some short percussive sounds, and some longer wider sounds. I started by time stretching the original to create some textures that I could use as loops. "Then I cut the original up by its transients in a sampler, pitching them up or down, reversing some. Then further abstracted them with re...
3m Aug 18, 2022
3m
Failing light
Composition by Caroline Grimshaw & António Sá-Dantas. "Our piece is an audio representation of the sense of irrelevancy and obsolescence that an individual may feel in a world that no longer recognises the value associated with that individual. The sound of a manual typewriter is our point of commencement and the concept of communicating through letters a message that can have far-reaching con...
2m Aug 18, 2022
2m
Please_wait
Composition by Eric Powell. "My goal in creating Please_wait was to embrace the theme of "obsolete sounds" on as many levels as possible. After selecting the sound of a Siemen’s ventilator–a rather rattly, yet sustained sound, I decided to use that everyday whirr to create a lush, choral, drone-y piece. I felt the best way to do that was to combine the fan sound with some kind of chime or bell...
4m Aug 18, 2022
4m
Hitting the fan
Composition by Elise Plans. "My obsolete sound is of a quirky little table fan, the Philips Ventilator HA2728, which has ambitions larger than its small size with its bright colours and smooth curvy design. "The sounds from the piece have almost all come from manipulating the recording, using sampling and time-stretching. I built a patch in Pure Data with various algorithms to play with the s...
5m Aug 18, 2022
5m
No.5
Composition by Paolo Calabrese. ""The way in which antiques refer to the past gives them an exclusively mythological character. The antique object no longer has any practical application, its role being merely to signify. It is astructural, it refuses structure, it is the extreme case of disavowal of the primary functions. Yet it is not afunctional, nor purely 'decorative' , for it has a very ...
19m Aug 18, 2022
19m
Las Rifas del Jefe
Composition by Jonatan de Jesús Carrasco Hernández. "I have many memories about me and the typewriters, in my house we had one of them. When I reach the middle school, I had a workshop of typing where we had to bring our own typewriter and practice the typing, all my friends had the same typewriter and mine was a little different because it was white (the other's typewriters were brown) and it...
8m Aug 18, 2022
8m
SVHS Camcorder Panasonic Movie Camera NV-S88
Recording provided by Conserve The Sound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
28s Aug 18, 2022
28s
Siemens TF 251 fan
Recording provided by Conserve The Sound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
42s Aug 18, 2022
42s
Philips HA2728 fan
Recording provided by Conserve The Sound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
27s Aug 18, 2022
27s
Braun Type HL 70 fan
Recording provided by Conserve The Sound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
27s Aug 18, 2022
27s
Urania typewriter
Recording provided by Conserve The Sound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
32s Aug 18, 2022
32s
Olivetti Studio 44 typewriter
Recording provided by Conserve The Sound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
17s Aug 18, 2022
17s
We interrupt this birdsong...
Birdsong on Monte Venda reimagined by Cities and Memory. An idyllic setting near the top of Monte Venda, listening to birdsong in the sunshine. But just down the track, there's a radio mast sitting at the very top of the hill, preventing us from reaching the actual summit. This piece considers the limitations of human hearing, and that we only take a snapshot from the middle of the huge range ...
6m Aug 18, 2022
6m
Birdsong on Monte Venda
At the top of a 600 metre-high hill in the Colli Euganei in northern Italy, we listen to multiple species of birds singing out on a warm day, with a gentle breeze and a view out over the hills. A restful soundscape. Recorded by Cities and Memory.
6m Aug 18, 2022
6m
My Grandmother didn’t just leave me a typewriter (featuring Mabel Hyacinth reading her poem, Web of Life)
Composition by Allis Hamilton. "My grandparents lived across the road from me growing up. It was my Grandmother Mabel Hyacinth (May) who introduced me to poetry. She wrote poetry herself and often used a typewriter. When her and my Grandfather finally moved out of their home, in the empty house on her kitchen table May had left me her typewriter. It was such a beautiful sight! Did she know I w...
3m Aug 18, 2022
3m
Requiem for Olivetti Dora
Composition by Daniel Chudley - Le Corre. "I have used the full sample as an introduction and then cut it up to create the rhythm. Taking inspiration from factory lines and repetitive melodies. "The track I have named - “Requiem for Olivetti Dora” "From humble beginnings to the mass production on these beautiful machines. The sound of type writers bringing forth new ideas on mass . Factories...
7m Aug 18, 2022
7m
QWERTZ
Composition by Point/Call. "In researching the Kochs Adler Nähmaschnenwerke, ABC typewriter, I discovered it was an attempt by a German sewing machine manufacturer to diversify into a new, hopefully, lucrative new market in the mid-1950’s. This was also the time of the burgeoning Space-race and Cold war, respectively, two historical events attempting something different, a new mode and area of...
3m Aug 18, 2022
3m
Triumph Elektro
Composition by Eric Klein. "I chose to concentrate on just "8 bars" of my staccato typewriter sample (it's actually two splices of "4 bars" stuck together.) Listening to this loop in my MPC sampler, I tapped out a tempo and worked from there. Now I took this sample of mechanical rhythm, and one "bar" at a time, I reproduced the hits of the typewriter keys as hits of Control Voltage (electrical...
4m Aug 18, 2022
4m
Click tick tin
Composition by Pie Are Squared. "The concept behind this track was to represent the typewriter as the birthplace of millions of ideas of all sorts, from the banal to the transcendent, and the vehicle that allowed these ideas to grow and materialise.  The track’s four sections attempt to represent those disparate ideas through epic horn sections, click and cut microedits and glitches, and outri...
6m Aug 18, 2022
6m
Olivetti Dora typewriter
Recording provided by Conserve The Sound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
34s Aug 18, 2022
34s
Monpti typewriter
Recording provided by Conserve The Sound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
30s Aug 18, 2022
30s
Kochs Adler Nähmaschinenwerke ABC typewriter
Recording provided by Conserve The Sound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
40s Aug 18, 2022
40s
Elektro Triumph-Adler Gabriele 100 Typ EL typewriter
Recording provided by Conserve The Sound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
48s Aug 18, 2022
48s
Adler Gabriele 2000 typewriter
Recording provided by Conserve The Sound. This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
35s Aug 18, 2022
35s