Phantomwhere

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

"This field recording made me think of different layers of migration - firstly, the population’s general tendency to move to the capital from other parts of the country. Secondly, the people moving between the parts of the city. Thirdly, an internal migration - drifting away from the traffic jam to a dreamlike space where the environmental sounds are muffled and become a flow of thoughts and memories.
"While working on this piece, I migrated from the digital medium to the analogue and back. I recorded separate frequency bands of the original audio on a 4-track tape, added subtle effects and kept bouncing the tracks (combining two or three tracks on one) until the original material became indiscernible as if creating a parallel lane of traffic leading elsewhere, away from the busy street.
"Then I recorded electric bass layers as a counterpoint to the whistle blows of the traffic managing policeman. But a melody never develops; the guitar imitates the monotony of the shrill tones and plays with their irregularity. And so the policeman’s whistle morphs into a musical instrument, the traffic becomes a wave. A kid’s voice brings you back to the reality. Does it though? Are there any tigers around? And what does “control the traffic” mean?"
Bishkek traffic control reimagined by Gundega Graudina.
Part of the Migration Sounds project, the world’s first collection of the sounds of human migration.
For more information and to explore the project, see https://www.citiesandmemory.com/migration
IMAGE: Vmenkov, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons