Hamburg daydream by Jase Warner

Hamburg Daydream is a soundscape based on – as the title would suggest – a daydream, and is inspired by a Cities & Memory field recording that was taken at Willkomm-Höft in Hamburg on the banks of the Elbe River.

The field recording used in this piece is one of 39 recordings that were taken from around the city by Stuart Fowkes, the creator of the Cities & Memory sound mapping project. Stuart visited Hamburg with the aim of recording material that would represent a day in the life of the city. He then invited sound artists, composers and musicians to each pick a recording and remix it, following the Cities & Memory philosophy of creating imagined sounds to represent an "alternative counterpart" of the respective location.

I listened to perhaps three or four recordings before picking one. The sounds of the Willkomm-Höft, with the ebb and flow of the river, the national anthem being played through loudspeakers, and the whirr-like hum of the wind, led me in to a daydream as I contemplated many things in such a short space of time.

The piece itself is an exploration of daydreaming and its relationship with sound. Material from the original field recording drifts in and out of the piece, much alike ones awareness of reality does when in a dream-like state. Those moments are separated by movements that represent state of mood and passage of thought, and as the composition progresses those thoughts become more prominent and realised, until eventually one is brought back to reality – to the sounds of the Elbe River, comforted in the knowledge that the world watched over you, and carried you from your dream to the present moment.