7.30 pm – The Landungsbruecken rehearse for their big moment

This is the first time that a field recording and the resulting reinterpretation are both by us, with the Cities and Memory take on the Landungsbruecken. Here in the original recording, you can hear the irregular but distinctive creaking of one of the floating platforms, which creaks away when the wash from the boats passing causes the entire 700 metre-long structure to move on the water. When you’re walking along it’s barely perceptible, and inside the restaurants you can’t feel it at all. But sitting down, you can feel the movement and this sound is a constant reminder of how the Landungsbruecken is a living part of the harbour itself.

To me, the creaking sounded very much like the sound of the string section of an orchestra tuning up before a concert, as if the entire structure was somehow rehearsing for its big moment. For the reimagined version, I’ve blended the original recording with sounds of various orchestral tunings playing in and out of one another, as if the bridges are tuning off the violins or vice versa. At the end, the concert begins, with two layered sounds in unison, one made from the violins and the other made from the bridges. Having tuned to each other, the two find harmony.

City version:

Memory version: