In heterogeneous composite materials, the behaviour of the medium on larger scales is determined by the microgeometry and properties of the constituents on finer scales. To model the influence of the microlevel processes in composite materials, they are described as materials with memory in which the constitutive relations between stress and strain are given as time-domain convolutions with some relaxation kernel. The paper reveals the relationship between the viscoelastic relaxation kernel and the spectral measure in the Stieltjes integral representation of the effective properties of composites. This spectral measure contains all information about the microgeometry of the material, thus providing a link between the relaxation kernel and the microstructure of the composite. We show that the internal resonances of the microstructure determine the characteristic relaxation times of the fading memory kernel and can be used to introduce a set of internal variables that captures dissipation at the microscale. This article is part of the theme issue 'Modelling of dynamic phenomena and localization in structured media (part 2)'.