The golden hour

The field recording upon which this piece is based doesn't sound like much, but it represents a huge moment for the Cities and Memory project, and a personal moment for me. The first ever overseas recording submitted to the project back in 2015 was from Sofienbergparken in Oslo, and it felt incredible that the project had managed to reach anyone outside of the UK and inspire them to submit a sound. From tiny acorns, mighty oaks grow, and ten years later we're close to 8,000 sounds submitted to the project.

I was invited to return to Oslo to perform Cities and Memory live shows and deliver a presentation, and so visiting Sofienbergparken was a kind of pilgrimage to me - a place I'd imagined through sound but never seen. It was a glorious September late afternoon, with warm golden sunshine, and I recorded a walkthrough of the park, with lots of different groups all enjoying the space, from children in the playground to groups listening to music and smoking, groups playing table tennis, groups sitting around enjoying a Saturday evening beer, dog walkers, exercisers and so on - all of Oslo was here to enjoy the park, it seemed. 

This piece tries to sum up in sound some of what I felt in that golden sunshine, experiencing a moment of warmth and peace ten years on from that first sound. Synths layer on the warmth of emotion, while snippets from the field recording of enjoyment - children playing, table tennis matches in action - rise up into the mix. A layered bed of the field recording sits underneath, and pans from left to right as the piece progresses, so you join me on a walk across the park - the final sounds are the crunch of gravel underfoot as I finally take my leave, satisfied.  

Sofienbergparken reimagined by Cities and Memory.