18,000 Hammers

Part of our Prison Songs project - see www.citiesandmemory.com/prisonsongs for full details.

Reimagined version of Eighteen Hammers by Cities and Memory.

"The original recording is an incredibly powerful and beautiful song, simultaneously expressing hope and despair, defiance and compliance, romanticising the sight and sound of the everyday working tools that assumed so much importance in the lives of the prisoners. Taking the fact that the hammers mark time in the song (or rather the song powers along the workers to keep up the pace) as a starting point, I imagined what it would be like if there were hundreds of prisoners, hundreds of hammers, all chiming rhythmically in and out of one another until the hammers themselves become a rhythmic symphony. The drum samples are made from pieces of metal, as are several of the source sounds from which synth parts are derived."