Today we take a trip to Paris, with a field recording of church bells at Saint Nicolas des Champs in Le Marais, Paris in December 2023. There are two major roads either side of the church, which are constantly busy with noisy traffic and mean that this once peaceful oasis is almost drowned out by […]
The storming of the Bastille prison on July 14, 1789 has been commemorated in France for more than a century. Today, the festivities of July 14 are as popular as ever and in Paris, the celebrations culminate with a magnificent fireworks display at the Eiffel Tower, as captured by Colin Hunter – you can also […]
Join us in Paris, as this field recording takes us to the Trocadero metro station, where a group of Jewish musicians play a klezmer-style arrangement of the traditional song Shalom Aleichem, which is typically sung on Friday evenings upon returning home from synagogue prayers and means “peace be upon you”. This performance represents one aspect […]
What does the sound of a luggage bag being dragged along mean to you? For Loz Colbert, who performs with the band RIDE, it became a document of life travelling as a musician, as he told us when he sent this field recording from Paris: “”I recorded the sound of my luggage bag on various […]
The next stop on our Future Cities tour of the world’s cities is another of its most iconic – Paris. Come with us and explore some of the fascinating sounds of this wonderful city – and hear how it’s brought inspiration to artists in their reimagined versions. We start by the banks of the Seine, […]
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"As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. A description of [the city] as it is today should contain all [the city's] past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the bags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls."
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Grand Prix winner and Coup de Coeur winner, Académie Charles Cros
