uick: name a Biblical city that's still around today (name and all)? Well, there's Jerusalem, of course. Then Rome. What next? How about Damascus? Yep, Damascus, the capital of modern day Syria, nestled along the Barouda river, just to the east of Lebanon and the disputed Golan Heights, has been continuously inhabited for over 6,000 years. It's older than Rome, Baghdad, Jerusalem, or even Pittsburgh! As with any city that's been around for such a long time, Damascus has endured good times and bad times. Sadly, the last few decades have, by and large, been bad times—due largely to Syria's difficult geographic position between Israel, Turkey, and Iraq. Because Syria is seen as a haven for terrorists and extreme Islamic activism, and because Syria is located squarely in the center of the most violent part of the world, the country—and Damascus in particular—has been effectively cut off from the west, to the point that most in Europe or North America know next to nothing about this ancient and culturally diverse place.

Enter Seattle-based Sublime Frequencies, a label that, in the past few years, has released numerous field recordings of radio culture and everyday life in Middle Eastern countries. I Remember Syria follows Radio Morocco and Radio Palestine as an entry-point for western listeners to become acquainted with the sounds of everyday life in a part of the world that is either ignored or misunderstood. Syria was recorded between 1998 and 2000 in Damascus and other parts of Syria, and it offers insights into this complex, fascinating part of the world that are truly welcome in this age of "new world order" fascism.

Two things separate I Remember Syria from the two Radio CDs. The first is that Syria is a two-disk set. The other, more significant difference is that most of the recordings are not taken from the radio but from the streets and bazaars and mosques and weddings of Damascus. The Radio disks used snippets from a variety of radio broadcasts to create sound collages that attempted provide listeners with a broad picture of the many different types of information conveyed through the ether to Mediterranean audiences. I Remember Syria, by contrast, is a much more traditional field recording. There is some collage, but the various recordings are set apart as distinct tracks, with distinct titles that clearly identify the general locations for each sound work.

Still, a sense of fragmentation does exist here, as each track offers a unique glimpse into Syrian life. Disk one, for example, begins with the opening chords of a Syrian news program theme (Arabic Muzak). This leads into "Rawdan Satellite—The Bedouin Lobby," which presents the sound of a person walking around what I'm guessing is a hotel, through a lobby, out the door, past street musicians, and into a car, where someone asks, in English, "What time is it?" This is followed by what sounds like radio broadcasts coming from somewhere (the car?). This is then followed by the next track, "Damascus Between the Lines," which seems to present us a variety of sounds from the streets of Damascus, including music, car noises, cell phone beeps, footsteps, people buying fruit, and just about anything else you can think of.

The disk continues in this way: each track offering a glimpse into Damascus life, be it in streets or on the radio or television or in shops, cafes, wedding celebrations, or people's homes. Disk two offers the same sort of broad-based look into Syrian life, only this time the focus is outside Damascus, in the radio waves and everyday scenes of greater Syria.

The goal of these two disks is to give westerners a picture of what it might sound like to live in Syria. On this front, it does a wonderful job. The disk is broad-based in its approach to sounds, but it's also much better organized than the Radio disks, meaning that it's easier to follow the "narrative" of the work. Moreover, there are some interesting political discussions included on the disks—most in English—that offer Syrian perspectives on everything from Saddam Hussein to the Mujahadeen to homosexuality. It's these latter points—points where we actually get to learn what Syrians are thinking, not just what they're hearing—that makes I Remember Syria the best of Sublime Frequencies field recordings to date.