“The idea was to sum up the experience of a large train station – there’s always an urgency (suggested by the kick drum) and people rushing around. Lots of background sounds, maybe a moment of reflection before the rush starts again.”
As part of our overall Sound Waves project, 38 sound artists from around the world have submitted a field recording and reimagining of water somewhere in the world: ocean, river, lake, stream, swimming pool, boiling kettle, splash of a puddle – anything in which water is the defining sound. These reimagined sounds have been recomposed and re-edited by Cities and Memory into this 30-minute mixed sound piece incorporating many of the sounds in a new context.
“It started as an idea to use the Cities and Memory Botany Bay sample as the backdrop for a reading from ‘The Sea Priestess’ by Dion Fortune.We are both really pleased with how the song has turned out. The process went very smoothly despite the fact that we are on both sides of the Atlantic – just goes to show that music knows no boundaries.”
“The idea comes from travelling on a subway when you’re a bit stressed because you’re lost and not really sure where you’re going. As a result you’re not really listening to the announcements (even though you should be) and then you can’t remember if you’ve heard them or not, or even if they are in the right order.”
“At the back of the salvage yard is a huge concrete tower, which would seem to be a water tower, but with several radio attachments at the top, which emits warm, full, pulsing drones out into the air. The tower of drones is like something from a mundane, Oxford-based version of War of the Worlds.”
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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
