Create a Glasgow music mash-up with Mix the City

Fancy yourself a DJ? Mix the City lets you do just that. The British Council's online music platform centres on different cities around the world, and features a series of audio-visual samples of local musicians recorded at signature landmarks in their city, which you can then mix and match to make your own music. Each mix you create generates a mash-up that tries to replicate the flavour of that city's culture through its music and its urban environment.

Mix the City is available for myriad locations around the world, from Manhattan to Moscow to Mumbai, and Glasgow is about to get its own version as part of Festival 2018, the cultural programme for the Glasgow 2018 European Championships, in collaboration with European Championships co-host Berlin.

Each Mix the City features 12 musicians in different locations around their city, and Glasgow’s edition features a host of Skinny favourites. Curated by Alun Woodward (The Delgados, Chemikal Underground), the dozen musicians involved are Kathryn Joseph, Ela Orleans, Modern Studies, RM Hubbert, Joe Rattray, Petrichor, Richard Youngs, Mairi Morrison, Ilk, Alasdair Roberts, Anoushka Nanguy and Raymond MacDonald.

“Curating Mix The City has been a really interesting and enlightening experience,” says Woodward. “There was a generosity of spirit amongst the musicians who were happy to dodge snow, traffic, seagulls and excited curious children to make something weird and wonderful. The music they created feels unique and soundtracks the flow of a charismatic and innovative city.”

The location for the short video clips include iconic spaces around Glasgow, both indoor and outdoor, such as The Barrowlands Ballroom, the Necropolis, and Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

The Berlin lineup is similarly impressive, featuring Apparat, Jochen Arbeit (Einstürzende Neubauten) and Gemma Ray. “The work on Mix the City once again showed how unique and diverse Berlin’s music scene is,” said Christian Morin from PopKultur, who’s curator of Mix the City Berlin. “East and West-socialisation, Expats, new-Berliners and locals and many artists from a fantastic creative breeding ground. You can hear, feel and see that in Mix the City – the unique Berlin-sound.”

In addition to both cities featuring on Mix the City, there’s also a free live event called Mix the City Live that’s part of Festival 2018, and will feature some of the contributing Glasgow and Berlin musicians performing on George Square on Friday 3 August.

Mix the City is just one of the cultural collaborations planned by the two host cities, with the aim of each collaborative project to “compliment the sporting and cultural ties that already exist and will develop in the lead up to and during the Championships.”

You can have a play of the Mix the City platform now over at www.mixthecity.com, with the Glasgow and Berlin samples going live in July