Cities and Memory - remixing the world

• The Oldenburg ultras choir

  "I asked for a random field recording to let chance guide my ear. What arrived resonated: unmistakably urban, shaped by the pulse of a collective ritual. In the voices of the Vfb Oldenburg Ultras chants I heard an expression of joy and working-class culture, a liturgy sung by a secular choir. Lower division football provides an inclusive space where local cultural identity and community can be celebrated. The glamour needs to be homegrown on a wet midweek evening, when your team is losing (again). This sense of community is often more inspiring than the display on the pitch. It also helped that they share the blue and white stripes of my own club. "The piece draws solely from the original recording, its sounds stretched and looped across four tapes, long and short fragments circling one another. Overdrive, echo, resonators, and reverb shape the texture, sharpening some edges, dissolving others to emphasise and blend. I let the voices and rhythms guide the process, leaving them ‘visible’ throughout, figures present in the fog. Their call and response summoned memories of Bali’s Kecak — the chant’s spiralling energy, its collective breath — while the martial drumming beneath it all became the spine of the beat. Everything is distorted as it should be." Oldenburg FC vs. Luebeck match reimagined by smithdarg.

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• Duality

  "Duality draws from the resonant tolling of church bells. The work explores how a single sound can hold opposing states—deep yet relaxing, weighty yet weightless. The bells become a meditation on perception itself: their meaning shaped not by acoustic properties alone, but by the listener's inner state. In their reverberations lies a paradox resolved only in stillness." Bremerhaven bell sounds reimagined by Bruce Nemeth.

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• 1 o'clock at Buergermeister-Smidt-Gedaechtniskirche

  Church bells ring for 1pm at the Buergermeister-Smidt-Gedaechtniskirche, Bremerhaven, Germany, as police sirens sound in the background. Recorded in May 2025 by Cities and Memory. 

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• Hakkeijima Island underwater

  Underwater sounds, the sound of waves on the sea, the vibration of wires to prevent falls, these are recorded. The sound of a titmouse playing on the wire is also included in the recording. Recorded 28.01.2025, 4:43pm by Miduno. 

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• The Norwegian wild bee

  Soundscape of buzzing bees in a field in Leknes, Norway. Recorded by Agapi Zita. 

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