Find the Sacred Spaces project here: https://citiesandmemory.com/sacredspaces/
The Sacred Spaces project is a part of the cities and memories: remixing the world sound project. The project invites artists to submit field recordings and reimaginations of these field recordings to a global archive of sound.
One of my favourite submission to the sacred spaces project is Winter Fog at the Cathedrial of Desolate Souls (Mexico City, 2017)
Listen Here :
https://embeds.audioboom.com/posts/5494761/embed?v=202301
Artist Scott Lawlor explains his process below the piece, the sound is originally a church bell that has been processed multiple times using VST plugins, reverbartion, panning, speed modulation, pitch modulation, EQ, and duplication. I appreciate the transparency Lawlor has on his process, I have taken inspiration on how to process field recordings for this project from this work.
The piece is intense but also beautiful and delicate. I find the way the piece rises and falls enchanting, it felt otherworldly to listen to. This encapsulates the title “desolate souls”, and is perhaps a reference to the devil within Christianity.
Sqaured Out (Tirana Mosque) is another brilliant piece from the sacred spaces project.
Listen here:
Reimagined by Radio Hummingbird, the piece features field recordings of natural environments as well as urban environments including a call to prayer a sonic feature of Islam. The artist (whose name I cannot find), describes having a similar outlook on religion to myself, stating “I am not a great believer in anything other than spirituality and mutual respect”. I think that the piece being inspired by a religion that is not the artists own religion is lovely, it has been done with respect and care. The artist outlines that the reason they chose to focus on a Mosque is because they feel that Islam has been treated with deep suspicion in recent years, this makes me see this piece as an act of solidarity.
The artist uses “modular synthesizer to emanate the principal melodies to create additional soundscapes influenced by the source.” I enjoy the process of being inspired a field recording to create a melody and feel as though it is very affective in this piece, and gives a sense of continuity bringing the artis