Cities and Memory - remixing the world

I recorded this sound on the balcony at home. At the very beginning you can hear the sound of my cat named “Count”. The sky was lit up by sunset, very warm and pleasant.
Recorded in Yakutask, Russia by Marina Dragan.

This recording captures a rare early-morning moment on Mt. Nokogiri in June, where multiple Grey-headed woodpeckers drum simultaneously, their distinct rhythms responding to one another and forming an emergent chorus across the forested slopes. 
The mountain’s steep rock faces, softened by light drizzle and humid dawn air, shape the sound through natural reverberation, revealing how weather and topography actively participate in the soundscape.
Recorded in Chiba, Japan by Miduno.

"Yakutsk looks like it's in the middle of nowhere so I wanted the piece to reflect a journey there. I also wanted the original recording to feel like it was a subtle part of the piece without taking over."
Birdsong in Yakutask reimagined by Richard Watts.

"The recording inspired me by setting me into a more landscape and nature sort of environment. But also being from a place which is a big city, I used synthesizers to make the second part of the track. 
"There's also filter and sequencing of the birds song in the last part, to make it even more unnatural, before going back to the nature landscape again."
Birdsong in Chiba, Japan reimagined by stereopsis.

As one of the world's most famous sacred spaces, Notre Dame in Paris has a very particular effect even on the non-religious, perhaps close to Stendhal Syndrome. But it's not just about the space itself, it's about sharing that awe with thousands of other people concurrently, as an endless snaking line of people enters the space, each to have their own significant experience, whether it's of secular beauty or sacred majesty. 
The drone of shuffling feet and low conversation, amplified by thousands of people in such a huge space, can be sonically overwhelming, however. In this piece, I wanted to transform that hubbub created by the presence of people into something that did greater justice to the majesty of the location, a kind of ambient sonic offering back to the physical space in Notre Dame. 
Here, the background hum of people becomes an ambient pulse that magnifies attention rather than distracting from it, while the periodic reminders to "shhhh" and be silent punctuate the piece as a constant reminder of the presence of control and administration, even as we communally share an all too rare moment of the sacred. The piece is a magnification of the type of attention we only pay when we are shocked out of ourselves by beauty, and by scale. 
Notre Dame cathedral soundscape reimagined by Cities and Memory.