Cities and Memory - remixing the world

The biggest race of the evening's race meet, as the Formula 1 cars battle it out in the final race - this is a recording of the entire race, including an interruption for a crash on the track, which means all the cars stop racing while the somewhat broken cars are safely removed from the arena, before the race can resume.  Double world final weekend at Northampton International Shaleway, featuring...

"Built around a 14-minute field recording of the final "Grand National" race at Northampton International Shaleway, the 6 minute track tries to balances the raw noise and chaos of stock car racing by building the music around the recording. "Working in Ableton Live, the sound of the trackside PA and racing engines are edited into rhythmic hooks, processed through Baby Audio’s HyperWarp and Super V...

This recording was captured inside the main passage of Nanjing’s Zhonghua Gate. Outside lies a busy intersection, where the sound of traffic, churned within the passage, forms a pure urban soundscape with a rare reverberation unique to such city spaces. Yet, it lacks distinct regional character, carrying more symbolic weight in a textual sense. No human clamor, only passersby. In the history of em...

"I listened to the file several times. The atmospheres are urban and dense. I tried to transform the sounds to create a sense of movement—a ghostly quality, as if the listener were in motion while remaining stationary. A kind of dreamy, ethereal contemplation." Nanjing, Zhonghua Gate Main Passage reimagined by Philippe Neau.

"With its concrete sonic materials and spacial panning, Resistance Lovesong explores the friction between animate spirit and mechanical oppression; industrial noise collides with birdsong, evoking the image of a narrow strip of open sky trapped above an alienating factory: the birdsong resounds as a symbol of hope, a lovesong, a fragment of absolute freedom." Birdsong in Pignotti reimagined by Car...

Birds chirping in the early morning while camping in Pignotti, Italy. Recorded by Francesco.

A recording made at 10.30pm next to the Marcus Brunnen fountain in Bremen, Germany - water spouts from the fountain above our recorder, with the night air otherwise punctured solely by the sound of the occasional passer-by. Binaural recording. Recorded by Cities and Memory. 

I combined the flowing water with a gentle drum beat and occasional sounds from a kazoo.   Marktplatz fountain in Bremen reimagined by Antje Bothin.

A display of two large Tesla coils, which are capable of playing music, including the sounds of several well-known songs created from electricity during the demonstration. In between these loud sounds, we hear an explanation of how the coil works, mostly in Lithuanian with a sprinkling of English. Recorded in the Museum of Energy and Technology. Recorded in Vilnius, October 2026 by Cities and Memo...

" I worked on the sonic behaviour of the source and the noisy and rhythmic texture of the coil became connected through my electronic piece. Processing the behaviour of the Tesla coil gave rise to diverse sonic entities in my electronic piece." Tesla coil show in Vilnius reimagined by Elnaz Behfar. 

"The field recording was examined at an inn in the west of Sweden, near the border with Norway, and held the quiet of that threshold ground — an apt undercurrent for the piece that formed there. The title is the exact point of the composition's making, which can be found by entering it into What3Words.  "Four software synths rest upon the recording: a pad, a drone, and two motifs, the higher one i...

Cascada del Batán - Bogarra, Albacete, Spain. Recorded by Antonio Sarrión (SoundRadar).

"A melancholic multi-layered ambient piece in A based against the backdrop of Paul Wheeler's recording of Hungerford bridge. My object was to intertwine the percussive character of the sample with the melodiousness of my track." Hungerford bridge reimagined by Paul Soto. Image credit: Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 < https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 >, via Wikimedia Commons

Recorded at night beneath this wrought iron railway bridge over the River Thames. The massively loud bangs, clattering and rumbles of trains as they pass overhead contrasts with the sounds of water gently lapping at the bridge supports, and people chatting as they walk along the South Bank. The bridge, over 160 years old, is currently being refurbished, so these sounds may not last for much longer...

"I used a recording of ducks on a Russian lake with a plane flying overhead. It was a 6 minute track and I only used about 1 minute which I chopped up into my sampler. I then played the samples rhythmically using the plane as a drone and the ducks as an instrument. This was treated with delay. Behind this initial track I added two tracks of analog synth and topped it all off with a very simple and...

A field recording captured at the Voronezhskie Lakes park in Samara, Russia, around 11:00 AM. The recording features ducks quacking and taking off from the water. In the background, you can hear ambient city sounds, distant airplane noise, and people's conversations. Recorded by Vitaly Safarov.

Birds nesting in scaffolding at Kroepcke Passage shopping centre, along with street sweeper sounds.  Recorded in Hanover, Germany by Cities and Memory.  

"After a few false starts, I decided to simply improvise a line for flute in my usual notation software while listening to the birdsong file. I then used this to create a line of counterpoint for a second flute, but quickly realized that the piece would be better served by a darker, contrasting instrument, and settled on the cello. Finally, I filled out the texture with a piccolo, reharmonized the...

"The presence of science is a huge part of Oxford, but one that's often overlooked in favour of the more traditional side of Oxford University and of the city more widely, but science is hugely important to the city. This piece is a tribute to the scientific side of Oxford, as a reimagined take on the fascinating, huge tanks of liquid nitrogen that sit hissing away between the Department of Earth...

On 17 June 2026, the Oxford Union debating society invited extreme right wing agitators Tommy Robinson and Laurence Fox to take part in an inflammatory debate titled "This house believe the West is right to be suspicious of Islam". The response was mass protests in the city centre, with up to 1,000 anti-fascist demonstrators surrounding the Oxford Union (and about 30 pro-Tommy Robinson supporters...

"I listened to the original recording a few times to pick out some focal points I could use, notable the "Tommy Tommy" chant at the beginning and the "refugees are welcome" chant at the end. I also picked out some profanity used by a member of the protest directed at a female member of the opposition and pitch shifted a few other bits to use more as textures. "It's quite an experimental piece, lot...

Cities and Memory: "A special recording like this needed special treatment, so I had a collaboration in mind from the outset when starting on the music. Thinking about that, I set out to create a track that evoked the feeling of the dusk skies and the mellow heat of the African savannah. The field recording was full of different voices and tones, so using it as a bed for the track required some ca...

The microphones were set metres away from the lions as the light dropped off and the temperature shifted. The lions are close. This is by far the most dangerous recording I have ever done. Their voices hold weight, spreading slowly across the savannah, overlapping in uneven intervals. There is a sense of space in the gaps between each call. What carries first is distance, low frequency calls movin...

Broadcast on BBC 6music, Sunday 26 July 2026. Cerys Matthews talks to Cities and Memory creator Stuart Fowkes about disappearing and obsolete sounds, and introduces the project. Includes musical selections by Stuart from Can, Broadcast, Stuart Dempster, William Basinski & Janek Schaefer and The For Carnation.  

Woodland birds recorded during daytime in Nottinghamshire, England. Blue tits are very prominent in the recording. Recorded by Tim Hills.