Cities and Memory: Heritage Sounds

Happy to once again be a part of a fantastic project. Cities and Memory: Heritage Sounds project (2025), is a compilation of sounds and reimaginings of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. My piece is based on a recording made by Rafael Diogo (Deep Dive Sound) of an ancient door in Ushguli Village in the Upper Svaneti region of Northern Georgia.

I love a creaky door sound anytime, but this one was particularly special - the slow movement of this ancient door as it groaned and rumbled on its rusty hinges. The sound was evocative of the remote mountain landscape it came from. You could almost smell the freshness of the air and feel the solidity of the village’s decadent medieval stone Svan towers. I had never heard of this place until this recording prompted me to explore it via Googlemaps, and it has certainly captivated me to go and visit one day.

My track is a journey of possibilities with echoes of a time gone by. I created the pulsing distorted rhythms using granular synthesis of time stretched samples of the door recording. I imagined the glitchy grains of sound bouncing between the walls, up through the rafters and out into the valley. There are moments of energy and moments of calm, as if we are eagerly walking the stony paths of the village, peering through the wooden doorframes of abandoned buildings, and stopping to smell the mountains.

Check out the whole project on the Cities and Memory site: https://citiesandmemory.com/heritage/