The sounds of Venice’s Acqua Alta bookshop

A visit today to one of the most beautiful bookshops in the world – Acqua Alta in Venice, which has entire gondolas full of books inside, and opens out directly onto the canals of Venice.

Thus, inside the bookshop – as well as the sounds of people browsing and chatting – you can hear the sounds of boats passing and the natural life of Venice’s canals. It sounds gorgeous, as well as being visually spectacular.

The reimagined sound begins with layering a simple loop from the bookshop into a reverb-drenched loop of the same, before losing itself in a pulsing throb of layered synths constructed from metallic sounds. Finally, Italian conversations are mapped against a bass pulse that tracks alongside the flow of conversation, ebbing and flowing with the words, just as the waters ebb and flow outside the bookshop’s doors.

City version:

Memory version: