As Cities and Memory heads into its tenth year of existence (!), 2024 has had some real landmarks and highlights, which we’re happy to share with you in this brief review of the year.

We began the year with the launch of our latest project, The Sound of Adventure, exploring the sounds of global travel with Exodus Travels and reimagined soundscapes from a dozen countries.

We commissioned 12 field recordists to capture the soundscapes of a dozen travel destinations all over the world. Those recordists headed out to record incredible soundscapes, which were offered up to 12 specially-selected artists to develop compositions that expressed what travel and adventure meant to them, including:

– A Masai Mara warriors’ song and dance performance 🇰🇪

– Traditional kickboxing training in a Muay Thai gym in Chiang Mai 🇹🇭

– Dawn choruses and natural soundscapes from the Costa Rican rainforests 🇨🇷, midnight in the French countryside 🇫🇷 and Vietnamese jungle 🇻🇳

April saw the release of “Ears to the Ground”, an amazing book by Ben Murphy examining the intersections between field recording and electronic music, with a whole chapter about Cities and Memory. It was amazing to feature alongside so many groundbreaking artists, as we discussed at length how the project explores the space between remix culture and field recording.

And as usual, we opened up our vault of field recordings to launch the Spring Project too!

Over the summer, we continued our series of location-specific releases, with three very diverse albums in Sounds from China, Sounds from London and one from our home city in Sounds from Oxford. 

We collected together some of thoughts on the practice of field recording as “a form of creative, active and intensive listening to the world around us”, and looked at four of the main ways field recordings are being used creatively in 2024 – read all about it here: https://citiesandmemory.com/field-recording/

Throughout the summer, though, we were out and about field recording at sporting tournaments, exploring nature and starting the recording process for our new UNESCO heritage project.

 

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Autumn was when the year really got going with the launch of one of our most successful and important projects to date, Migration Sounds. This partnership with the team from COMPAS at Oxford University had been in the works for well over a year, as we’d been collecting the sounds of human migration from all over the world. 

With 120 stories of human migration, all reimagined with extraordinary insight and depth into a range of brand new compositions, the project uses sound to look at the migration conversation in a whole new way. 

After its launch, the project transformed into a three-day installation in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, taking it to a whole new audience. The Oxford University team made a short film about the experience, which you can watch here:

Sonic Heritage

In a very busy Autumn, we launched the call for recordings for our newest project, Sonic Heritage, which explores what the most famous sights in the world sound like, and raises questions – through sound – about questions like overtourism, heritage and preservation. 

You can submit recordings until the end of 2024, and join the artist waitlist for Q1 next year.

We also found time to visit Tallinn and Helsinki for a few days to record sounds for that very forthcoming project – here’s how Tallinn looks to a field recordist in the Autumn:

 

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As we moved towards winter, Migration Sounds was also celebrated as a live experience, marking the first time we’d been able to bring Cities and Memory artists together to perform their compositions live. Here are some of the highlights: 

 

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A lovely way to celebrate Migration Sounds came from NTS Radio’s special day of programming for International Migrants’ Day, for which they invited us to contribute a 30-minute field recording special. You can listen to the programme below and find out more here. 

Sound of the Year Awards

We also joined the Sound of the Year Awards for 2025 as a category partner for Sound of the City, and can’t wait to hear your urban soundscape contributions in next year’s awards! 

Autumn Project 2024

This month we’ve also published the results of this year’s Autumn Project, for which more than 100 compositions were submitted, on this bespoke sound map, so you can explore some of the latest sounds added to the project: 

Sounds of the year

Some of the best sounds of the year are, as ever, summed up on our Sounds of the Year 2024 album. The eighth annual highlights compilation was this year joined by the first ever Field recordings of the year album, which collects some of the most beautiful, dramatic and evocative recordings submitted to the project over the last 12 months.

Cities and Memory is all about the very special community of artists all over the world who contribute recordings and compositions to make the project what it is – and it’s been really special to see connections between artists growing over the course of this year.

With a few live events and specific meetups too, it was great to spend 2024 actually being able to meet even more of you face to face, which has been amazing – thanks to everyone who came out to say hello during 2024!

A note for Michael

Last of all, we must mark 2024 with a special word for Michael Lilley, a long-standing contributor and friend of the project who very sadly passed away earlier this year.

Not just a very regular – and highly imaginative – contributor of more than 20 pieces to the project, we were also privileged to spend time with Michael at several of our London in-person meetups, where we found him to be a curious, warm and hugely engaging personality. We know he touched a lot of other contributors to the project too, so we hope you’ll join us in signing off 2024 with a tribute to Michael.