THE SONIC MEMORIAL PROJECT A National Collaboration

When National Public Radio announced wishes to collect audio material related to the World Trade Center, hundreds of listeners responded with ideas, messages, and recordings they had saved. The collection morphed into these radio broadcasts, which include audio of weddings in the tower’s restaurant, a woman imitating the lub-dub of the building’s revolving door, and recordings made by structural engineers of the towers’ rhythmic creaking in the wind. Business owners talk of their lives on the block before big money built the Trade Center; an unattended answering machine archives a man’s last words to his family. Since later programs repeat some material from the first ones, expect some disappointing déjà vu but keep going to experience proud sensations of that famous place. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 04]