"I chose this soundscape because I wanted to work with sonic elements far removed from what I’m used to hearing. That led me to explore sounds from Japan, and when I came across this recording, it struck me as something special because of its nostalgic quality. Like the person who captured it, I’ve also experienced “last evenings” in the places where I’ve lived. My own feeling isn’t always nostalgia, but rather a kind of emptiness. I wanted to explore that sense of abandonment through this beautiful soundscape of the Yamato River.
"In this piece, I processed the alarm sound in several different ways to create drones that helped me evoke the nostalgia and tenderness present in the original recording. I also wanted to complement the river with my own recordings of bodies of water. In that sense, the work functions, for me, both as an emotional cleanse and as a study of water itself."
Kashihara city soundscape reimagined by Sara Ramírez Márquez.
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Wëeña Rügaü (children of the river)
"Far deep inside the Amazon, after twelve hours on a canoe through green wilderness and mirrored skies, I arrived at a small indigenous Tikuna settlement nestled beside the river. There, children laughed as they bathed in the water’s bronze light, while their mothers washed clothes by the river, each rhythmic strike against the wood becoming part of the forest’s pulse — a gentle percussion older than language.
"From these living sounds, Wëeña Rügaü — Children of the River — was born. A composition woven from field recordings captured in this hidden, timeless place where the world seems to hum with remoteness. The piece unfolded naturally: the recordings became a bed of sound upon which layers of ambient pads from the OP-1 synth floated, diffused through a mood pedal. A kalimba then drifted in and out of the current, its tones dissolving into textures of light and distance as they passed through the Microcosm pedal.
"The piece moves like a dream — liquid, translucent, and eternal. It holds within it the memory of a suspended moment: the sun on the river, the echo of laughter, the endless green horizon breathing in rhythm. Recorded within a remote indigenous Tikuna community, this piece carries the shimmer of that living river — where sound becomes both memory and movement.
"Wëeña Rügaü is not merely a recording; it is a memory capsule — a sonic offering to the water that carries stories older than words, dedicated to the people who still live within its song."
Sao Pedro Tipisca Amazon soundscape reimagined by Rafael Diogo.
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By the river's side
By the river’s side in the Amazon, Colombia, the soundscape blends the gentle rush of the water with the rhythmic motion of people washing clothes. Children play joyfully in the river, their laughter and splashes mingling with the natural flow, creating a lively, harmonious atmosphere.
Recorded by Rafael Diogo.
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Prec-limit
"I made a number of live jams over a couple of weeks, each around an hour long, all manipulating a snippet of the recording, with some added synths; the final piece is an edit and amalgamation of two of these. A selection of others can be found at https://dtyb.bandcamp.com/album/warsaw.
St. Martin's church, Warsaw reimagined by dtyb.
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Hachimanju noir
"When I heard Miyu's recording of cicadas, I was brought back to humid late summers in Japan — where I lived for two years in the mid-aughts — particularly the time around the Obon festival, when, traditionally, the veil between the living and the dead is said to be at its thinnest.
"Cicadas, in a synesthetic way to me, are the sound of that veil shaking in a hot breeze, the static cling of the cosmic curtain, and there's a shiver to be savoured hearing them crackle and seethe as you climb the forested steps to the shrine that overlooks your neighborhood and pass through the red torii gate, half-hoping to be transported to some liminal, Twin Peaks by way of Haruki Murakami spirit lodge, but settling contentedly for a choco-banana from a festival vendor before the sweaty walk home."
Cicadas in Niigata, Japan reimagined by Casey Broadwater.
À propos de Cities and Memory - remixing the world
Cities and Memory remixes the world, one sound at a time - a global collaboration between artists and sound recordists all over the world.
The project presents an amazingly-diverse array of field recordings from all over the world, but also reimagined, recomposed versions of those recordings as we go on a mission to remix the world.
What you'll hear in the podcast are our latest sounds - either a field recording from somewhere in the world, or a remixed new composition based solely on those sounds. Each podcast description tells you more about what you're hearing, and where it came from.
There are more than 7,000 sounds featured on our sound map, spread over more than 130 countries and territories. The sounds cover parts of the world as diverse as the hubbub of San Francisco’s main station, traditional fishing women’s songs at Lake Turkana, the sound of computer data centres in Birmingham, spiritual temple chanting in New Taipei City or the hum of the vaporetto engines in Venice. You can explore the project in full at www.citiesandmemory.com
Écoutez Cities and Memory - remixing the world, Bookmakers : le making-of de la littérature ou d'autres podcasts du monde entier - avec l'app de radio.fr
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