Radio Lento podcast
Surround yourself with somewhere else. Captured quiet from natural places. Put the ”outside on” with headphones. Find us on Bluesky @RadioLento. Support the podcast on Ko-fi.
Tue, April 29, 2025
266 On upland pastures
Left of scene, a steep uninhabited valley, shrouded under dense woodland. Right of scene, rough pastures and grass meadows sloping gradually up, towards a distant horizon. Centre, a silvery glimpse of the moorland stream that's flowed down into this valley for as long as rain began to fall. Spring has arrived. The valley is verdant green, and alive with song birds, sheep and lambs. The air is so still, and soft. The scents of hawthorn and cow parsley rise on sun warmed eddies. Bees, from plant to plant, appear. Then disappear. Then appear again. Hovering. Manoeuvring. Speeding away. A lone goose in the mid-distance, is flying gracefully up the valley. Is following the stream. Its calls echo, across the vast empty space. How over time the sounds of this valley form naturally into a portrait. A spatial depiction, of life on an upland pasture. Clean. Fresh. Uncluttered. Unconcerned. And it is there. And with headphones, and a bit of time sat still, we can be there too. * This segment is from a long-form recording we made of this valley several years ago in the Peak District. We visited again only a few weeks ago, we can say things sound very much the same on the ground. What is changing though is an increased intensity of air travel. The skies are noisier now, preventing us from being able to share more recent recordings.
Mon, April 21, 2025
265 Low tide on the causeway (sleep safe)
Last week we visited Burgh Island in Devon on the south west coast of England. We made two overnight recordings, both looking out towards the island from Bigbury-on-Sea. The island is connected to the mainland by a sand causeway. This passage of time is from the second unaccompanied overnight recording, midnight to 1am. The darkness is solid. A landscape only sparsely inhabited. Low tide was several hours ago, but you can hardly tell that the sea has started to come in. Weather conditions are extremely mild with wind speeds of only 1 to 2 knots, gusting 5 to 6. After the first few minutes, the wind that's been audibly rustling the leaves of the palm tree holding the Lento recording box, drops to virtually nothing. The stillness reveals an aural expanse of true pristine quiet. The beach, stretching from far left to far right. The sand causeway, directly ahead, leading up onto the island. The sea, a split view with crashing waves audible both on the left side and the right side of scene, with the island a silent space in the middle. It's very rare we discover a landscape that possesses this level of peace. Such quiet enables the most delicate and the most spatial qualities of the aural environment to be perceived. A scene of an island, asleep, between two seas, at low tide.
Sun, April 13, 2025
264 Garden rain at night (sleep safe)
Last summer when we were stuck at home, and when heavy rain was forecast between midnight and three, we decided it'd be nice to capture its sound. The idea is enchanting. Rain, falling, on a little suburban garden, verdant with plants and shrubs of various kinds, as they quietly and invisibly sleep through the night. Hearing this scene though, is only possible by staying up and getting very tired and wet. But this is where the Lento box comes in. By leaving it out all night to do the listening and capturing, in natural spatial detail, we can then re-experience the sound of time passing through a pair of headphones or Airpods. It's a much more comfortable way to appreciate what a place sounded like, when there was no one around to witness it. If you've listened to Lento before, you'll know we usually capture the sound of falling rain from underneath a large tarpaulin we have stretched across our back yard. This time we decided to try something new. Right at the end of our little garden there are lots of plants and shrubs huddled against an old brick wall. Along the top of the wall is a wisteria plant that's got very big over the years. So many different types of leaves, we thought, to catch the rain drops as they fall. Just before midnight, and as the first rain began to fall, we placed the Lento box on a short tripod directly underneath the wisteria, and left it to record. Water was already pouring down through the leaves. A test for the box's weatherproofing, we hopefully muttered to ourselves, as we closed the back door and shuffled off to bed. * The recording location was north east London in July 2024. We have carefully chosen a segment of time where the least traffic noise and human activity is audible. Some micro-editing was needed though to ensure unavoidable noises such as heavy raindrops landing directly onto the microphone baffles and the occasional crump of cars rolling over local speed bumps have been softened out. Some planes overfly but they are very soft and gentle in tone. We have tagged this episode sleep safe due to the minimal impact of these non-natural sounds.
Sat, March 29, 2025
263 Wild open coastal reserve
Sat back, looking onto Rye Harbour nature reserve. There, to the ear, is the sea. From here it's out of sight, somewhere below the long shingle ridge. From this point across the reserve, it could to the ear be an aural sunrise. A wall of natural energy, lighting up the horizon with clean, white, spatialised noise. On the intervening land, stray gusts of wind swish swathes of sea grasses. Press whispily through thin wire fences. Lift circling seagulls even higher. Billow shapeless banks of cloud, from left to right of the gradually illuminating sky, water and air. In such an exposed panoramically vast space, come the timeless calls of sea birds. Animated brush strokes on a canvas that stretches from far left, to far right of scene. Each stroke, is an individual. Each, a living thing. A soul, for whom this wild open place is home. * This early morning hour is from an overnight recording we made last month from the edge of the nature reserve at Rye Harbour, East Sussex. It captures the sound-feel of wide open emptiness that you get when out and about on the reserve. It's also a rich source of naturally spatialised blue-grey and dark grey noise, produced by the sea and shaped by uninterrupted expanses of gently contoured shingled land. ** Lento is 5 today! Happy birthday to us! Thank you for listening, sharing and supporting us over five years. More here > https://ko-fi.com/radiolento
Mon, March 24, 2025
262 Night stream at West Quantoxhead (sheep sleep safe)
We found our way to record this remote location late at night, and in near total darkness. A sheltered dell, with a fresh running stream. Earlier in the day, when everything was bathed in bright grey light, we'd walked through this secluded place on our way down from West Quantoxhead, and decided it might be a perfect spot for the Lento box to make a long overnight recording. There's a branch just above your right shoulder, my partner quietly calls up from below. Can you use that to lever yourself up? The height I'd just gained had markedly improved the spatial clarity of the wrilling stream, so just a little higher, I thought. We really need to be able to properly hear the full width and detail of the water, as it flows through the dell. How still this place is. How perfectly balanced it sounds, nestled within the wildness of this wide open West Somerset landscape. To reach the branch I had to work my way through a mass of prickled twigs in the dark while holding the Lento box in one hand. After some not insignificant effort, the branch, and my elbow, connect. I haul up, wedge in, and tie the box onto the trunk. To be sure this spot meets the criteria we've evolved over the years, I try to match my head with the box, and hold completely still. Listening. Absorbing the scene. Slightly adjusting the angle of the mics, so they can capture as much as possible of what it is I'm actually hearing. Good, I quietly call down, this is it. We head back to where we are staying, leaving the Lento box to record alone, non-stop through the night. Without us or indeed anyone else about to witness, time passes. Looking down from the tree, the stream wrills, and the landscape murmurs its nocturnal murmurings. Sheep can be heard, sometimes moving vaguely, through the dark. And one seems to come to rest beneath the tree holding the mics. From time to time it makes the softest, most gentle noise, that a sheep can surely make.
Mon, March 17, 2025
261 Midnight in Rye
Twelve strikes the clock, of St Mary's Church in Rye, East Sussex. Midnight. A sound that for anyone left awake, opens a new page. It's a new day, captured by the Lento box perched high above the churchyard, one night in mid-February. The new day reads like this. The gnarled limb of a winter tree beside the churchyard creaks against an undulating wind. The flagpole at the top of the belfry tower, rattles, like the mast of some windswept sailing ship. The sky is heavy with cloud and dark. Coastal air ruffles and catches in the rooftops of huddled 14th century cottages. They look gathered in around the church, like a solid congregation. Time passes. Banks of wind rise, then subside. Creaks and rattles punctuate the night air. And the Quarterboy faintly chime out the quarters. St Mary's has a good clean bell. It echoes off the huddled houses beautifully. Sonorous tones, that seem to ring out with the same golden grey hues of the stones from which this ancient coastal town is built. The skittering leaves blowing and the almost too faint silvery ding dongs of the Quarterboys. * We captured this sound-view of St Mary's Church Rye last month on a freezing cold windswept night. We rested the Lento box on the outer ledge of a second floor window that looked over the churchyard and straight at the church itself (with a chain to stop it falling). Do let us know if you can hear the quarters being struck, they are subtle but just about audible. ** Explore more from Rye. Listen to the sound inside the belfry in episode 200 . That was a windy night too. *** We're building up to our 5th birthday. Watch this space!
Sun, March 09, 2025
260 Early spring in the Derbyshire hills
What a long-form sound landscape recording of the Derbyshire hills reveals, is space, weather, and birds. A buzzard. Mistle thrush. Song thrush. Great tit. Geese. Wren. Robin. Jackdaw. Pheasant. Black cap. All present in their different ways. Buffeted by strong spring breezes under grey skies. Ahead, down the fields, mid-left of scene, the rushing river fills the valley with soft white noise. Its sound is quite subtle, yet so present. So wide. And so constant. Over the thirty five years we've known this place, through all weathers, and all seasons, it's the river that's never changed. * Over the years we've shared many sound landscapes from this rural location in the Derbyshire hills. This until now unpublished segment comes from a 14 hour recording we made in mid-February 2022. We haven't been able to get there this month, so we're sharing this audio as a reminder of how the valley sounds now the spring is nearly here, as morning gets going.
Sat, March 01, 2025
259 Night rain under a large tarpaulin (sleep safe)
Sometimes, when persistent rain is forecast overnight, we place the Lento box out in the back garden on a long battery to capture the sound. Falling rain is always enchanting, especially at night when the city is asleep. We leave a large tarpaulin stretched across the yard to catch the raindrops as they fall. We position the microphone box centrally, angled up, so as the rain falls at random across the 4 metre by 3 metre surface. It captures a widely spatial sound-image of the rain. Somewhere very high up in the clouds, there is a special place. It's directly above the tarpaulin. The droplets that form here will not fall unwitnessed, as rain normally does. The droplets will instead fall down into this episode. To soothe and calm many ears. This night rain. Under a large tarpaulin.
Sat, February 22, 2025
258 Tidal breakers on Winchelsea beach (high definition spatial sound)
It is almost high tide on Winchelsea Beach. Old timbers, buried in the shingle berm, point up into the hazy winter sky. You scrunch over the stones. Rest your hands on their sturdy weatherworn tops. And begin to take in the scene. Clean sea air cuffs against your face. It smells faintly of salt, of sea wetted rock. The beach rakes sharply down into bright white froth. Then just blue-grey, out to the horizon. Nobody is about. Only distant shapes, of coasting sea birds. Each wave comes and breaks onto the shingle. Some roll in straight. Others from the side. Some cross. Some break twice. Some rise slowly up, overbalance and crash in one thunderous crump onto the hard shingle. Others race furtively towards the land, as if they can't wait to meet it. Together, over time, they paint a picture in sound, of this mid February beach, under a wide open, winter hazy sky. * We took this sound capture of the beach between Winchelsea and Rye Harbour a few days ago. The scene captures the weight and detail of the tidal breakers, and is best "seen" through headphones or Airpods. A little propeller plane flies over, and almost at the end a curlew can briefly be heard flying from right to left of scene, towards the Rye Harbour nature reserve.
Sat, February 15, 2025
257 Dawn birds of The Kielder Forest
This spatial sound-scene of dawn birdsong was captured from deep within the Kielder Forest, a huge wilderness of fir trees in the far north east of England almost at the border with Scotland. Along with most all of our 257 episodes, this audio was produced by leaving the Lento box to record alone on-location, over a long span of time. By listening back to the captured audio we pick out sections that best convey the aural richness and presence of what it was like to be present in that place. These sections then become the episodes. What you hear sounds strikingly real. We designed the Lento box to capture sound binaurally, in an unprocessed and realistic way. It lets us experience that aural sense of being present in the landscape. Ear-witnesses to the authentic passing of time. This unaccompanied recording method means we can "hear there", but not "be there". Being there affects animals, birds and insects. By not physically being there they can behave normally. They move about, communicate, sing, forage, free of being alarmed or inhibited. Thanks to the Lento box, we are able to witness what it sounds like to be in their world. This recording was made last May, amongst tall fir trees growing beside a rough track that runs into the forest, East of the reservoir. Willow warblers are most prominent, along with wrens, song thrush and other woodland birds. A cuckoo is just audible at 15 minutes. At 38 minutes two heavy creatures lumber by and scramble into the cover of the trees. Hearing how they traverse the space reveals just how careful they are being to avoid detection. One of the main reasons we travelled up to the Kielder Forest last year was to capture the evocative sound of wind moving through vast areas of fir trees. While the wind was not particularly strong at the time of this recording, the tall fir trees can still be heard in the wind, and producing that richly restorative and evocative hushing sound. If you're new to us, before you listen, here's a few tips about getting the most out of listening to Radio Lento . If you have listened to a few episodes, please could you buy us a coffee ? We are an independent and ad-free podcast, powered by our listeners.
Fri, February 07, 2025
256 Gulls and emptiness along the Creel Path
(Hello! We're a different type of podcast. If you're new to us, before you listen, here's a few tips about getting the most out of listening to Radio Lento .) The Creel Path, used by generations of fisherman to get from Coldingham to the coastal fishing village of St Abbs in the far south east of Scotland, is a thousand years old. It crosses an exposed coastal landscape, with rough pastures lying either side. Over the last century the addition of a telegraph wire, strung out along timber poles, may be one of the only significant changes to have been made to this narrow stony path. The Lento box is tied to a squat broad leaved tree along the path. It's facing east into a wide open field, and beyond that is the sea. Mid left of scene about a third of a mile away, a sense of the waves can be heard rushing into the harbour of St Abbs. To right of scene fields stretch inland with distant sheep and late season lambs. As time passes the engine of a fishing boat softly thrums the air. Gulls almost constantly wheel and circle across the emptiness of the sky. A quiet sky, free of human-made noise. A sky sounding like it must have always sounded, over centuries. * This sound capture is from an overnight recording we made in the summer of 2022 when we last visited St Abbs. This section follows on from the nocturnal scene captured in episode 208 . Now morning has broken, and the gusting wind that swept over the path in the night hours has settled. Gentler gusts occasionally blow through the tree, revealing its presence to the listener. Rain clouds are coming, but for now the air sounds bright and clear.
Fri, January 31, 2025
255 Quantock trees in late October air (night and sleep safe)
A wide open landscape, under a dark October sky. Remote. Naturally quiet. Witnessed from behind a lone cottage hidden between tall graceful trees. It's just rained. Drips are falling from the old slate roof into an overfilled drain. Time passes. Somewhere far off, mid-right of scene, an owl hoots. It's call, carried on the wind from rolling fields below. These late season leaves, so present in their rustlings, have seen the whole year through. They're soon to drop. Join the soft damp ground, and turn, slowly, to soil. For now though, while they wait for the weather to brittle them dry, their last job is to give voice to the ever-changing wind. The Lento box listens, takes in the scene, beneath the trees, on a garden table made of iron. The table is surrounded with ornate iron chairs. We have left it to record all night while we are asleep. To capture the aural essences of this Quantocks landscape, as time passes, with nobody around. * The first segment of this overnight capture is available in episode 245 . Thanks for listening and if you are a new subscriber, welcome! Find out more about the podcast and how we make the recordings at radiolento.org and if you would like to become a supporter Radio Lento is on Kofi .
Fri, January 24, 2025
254 Waves of West Somerset (sleep safe)
Follow the path with the sea on your left side, until you reach the trees. It's only a small outcrop, just beyond the banks of tangled shrubbery and before you get to the location of a 19th century harbour of Lilstock in West Somerset, now long-gone. Step off the path. Lean against one of the smooth bark trees, the one closest to where the pebbles start. And listen. We captured this aural scene one afternoon last October. It was an almost breezeless day. Bright, and clear. The conditions produced a pristine sound landscape. So crisp you can hear in full detail the movement of the longshore drift. Gentle waves, gambling over rocks and pebbles, from left to right of scene. A few robins sing from the shrubs nearby. A low hum mid-left of scene undulates from time to time, a marine vessel, moored off the coast. Ahead is the open water of the Bristol channel. To right of scene the landmass of Wales stretching away to the West, and the setting sun. It felt like a landscape at rest, under an almost quiet sky. * This recording is the second segment of an 80 minute take, with the Lento box tied to a tree facing out towards the shoreline about 30 yards in front. The first segment can be heard in episode 244 'Rocky West Somerset beach '.
Thu, January 16, 2025
253 Quiet night sky - Looe in Cornwall (sleep safe)
Quiet sky. This is how one sounds. Above Looe, on the Cornish coast. Thousands of cubic miles of empty air. No planes. No cars. No lorries to throw up their noise as they haul loads along dark country roads. Just gusts, and sea breezes. And a fleeting low whistle from a high chimney pot. Many steep tiled rooves, catching, and reflecting, and handing on their view of this sky's whisping sussurations. Roof, to roof, to roof, to microphone. To ear. To mind. To sleep. At first you may sense there is nothing to hear in this long-form night recording, and it is, as an audio recording, sparse. Or maybe not sparse, because the more you listen, the more you tune into the way the rooves catch and reflect the sound of the sky, the more your definition of what sound is shifts. People talking, and planes flying, and cars whining, and music playing, and things banging are of course what we are used to hearing everyday, and in the night too. But layered behind, usually far too soft to notice, is a whole world of different sounds. Sounds that are more like textures, and fabrics, and reflections, and perhaps shadows. We believe listening to these sounds, in the right setting, can help bring about a state of mind we think of as vigilant restfulness, where you feel aware of the environment, yet part asleep at the same time. This hour of captured night quiet is how Looe sounded, a few hours before dawn, back in April last year. The sea is near, and is subtly contributing to the background of this place. The sound-scene is rich with many other textural and fabric-like sounds. We left the Lento box to witness time passing through the night, on some wooden decking, surrounded by shrubs, a loose tarpaulin, and the peaceful atmosphere of a Cornish coastal town as it sleeps under a quiet, wide open sky. * Looe is one of the locations we have found with a very quiet sky. Having said this, towards the end of this recording, there is a plane vaguely audible, somewhere far away. We decided despite this we would go ahead anyway and share the segment because compared to much of the rest of the UK where we have recorded, this hour from Looe does convey a palpable sound-feel of being under a genuinely quiet sky. To us quiet skies are of equal importance as dark skies. The latter is much more talked about than the former, but we hope to do what we can to change this.
Wed, January 08, 2025
252 Late July breezes through the old churchyard
This barmy afternoon in Holme-Next-The-Sea has gained a stiff undulating wind. It hurries past the sheep in the paddock next to St Mary's church. Whisps through banks of unmown grasses, sifting up their scent. Shakes dry-leaved hedgerows so they sound as summer dry as the baked mud looks by the lane. Yes, today certainly feels like it's the first day of late summer. Sit then on the bench underneath the fir tree. Rest back from the deep blue sky. Feel the sun's heat radiating off the parapet wall of the church. Hear the changing wind. How it hushes in the fir's needles. Rustles in the broad leaves of the deciduous trees. Rises, then calms. Causes the landscape to shift between near, and far. Surely this is how to best enjoy such a day as this. With sheep, grazing in the field nearby. And wood pigeons, roosting along the church roof and above, in the trees. Spending time on this bench, taking in the day and the various kinds of warmth that it seems to be made of, might lull you into a daydream, and a thought. How are the animals around considering this first day of late summer? Are they enjoying the scents of the grass too? The hushing of the wind in the fir tree? The yellow orange heat rising from the sun warmed ground? Maybe they too have let go their plans, and are just basking in the sensations of what it is to be conscious of everything that's presently, and pleasantly around. * We made this recording in late July 2024. It was the way the wind sounded in the fir tree that caught our interest. Finding somewhere to locate the Lento box wasn't easy but we eventually managed to find a fence post that let the box capture the fir tree as it is in the wider landscape, beside the church. Sometimes the presence of the church can be felt as it reflects bird calls and other nearby sounds. At around 26 minutes the low rumble of a distant military jet plane can be heard for a short time. This part of England hosts various very active military airbases. We were in fact lucky to capture as long as we did before more and much louder jets flew over, producing intense low frequency rumbling.
Wed, January 01, 2025
251 Looking out on Portland Harbour
Portland. Southeast 4 or 5 increasing 7 or 8 veering South 4 or 5 later. Occasional showers. Good, becoming moderate. The Shipping Forecast marks its centenary on the BBC today. Happy birthday from Radio Lento ! ----- Take as a seat one of the large flat stones under a tree. It's a lone tree, full of sparrows. Watch the ocean boats. The high tide is on the turn. Shallow waves rolling about between the rocks. They're playing that game of colouring in. Darkening the boulders to show where they've been. Surge, break, wash, dissolve. Rest both hands on the sun-warm stone. Follow the ships and boats as they sail the shipping channel. Marine engines are felt as much in the chest as in the ears. Slowly each slides from view. Keep still though, so as not to frighten the sparrows. Sparrows, and softly breaking waves, and humming boats, and time in a coastal edgeland space, and no interruptions, might be good for a bit of thinking. That kind of thinking best done without notes. Without words or screens, prompts or lists. And without talking. Flow time thinking where thoughts and ideas and worries and inspirations surge, and break, and wash, and dissolve, just like the waves. * Happy New Year! Episode 251 is our first for 2025.
Tue, December 24, 2024
250 Moorland trees in mid-winter gales (sleep safe after owl)
For Christmas Eve we're sharing this nocturnal hour of sound landscape time captured by the Lento box in the high peaks of Derbyshire. Bare leafless trees, sighing together, in strong undulating mid-winter wind. We feel this is one of our most atmospheric overnight recordings of landscape trees. To far left of scene across a field there's a strip of woodland made mainly of tall established conifers. To centre of scene, stretching along a shallow ridge to the far right, trees of varying heights, beech, sycamore, elderberry, conifers. The exposed contours of this section of moorland tend to channel banks of moving air along and over the ridge, creating wonderfully spatial surges of energy that the trees convert into deep brown sound. For listeners using headphones or Airpods, the wind in the trees is sometimes so deep it is almost a sensation more felt than heard, as it gracefully moves across the aural landscape. * We made this recording high in the Derbyshire hills over Christmas 2023 during a period of unusually strong winter gales. There is only one overflight of the area as well that you may not even notice due to the wind. Such a quiet sky is also very unusual so near to Manchester's ringway airport. **This is our 250th episode! Happy Christmas and thanks for listening to Radio Lento.
Tue, December 17, 2024
249 Night stream at West Quantoxhead (sleep safe after 17 mins)
With the stream to our right, we headed down from the exposed uplands of West Quantoxhead and into a shallow valley. Sky whitish grey. Air still. It smelled of rich late Autumn undergrowth, and faintly of mushrooms. As we descended, the landscape changed. Became tucked in. Shapes of sheep shifted against dark thickets below. The grass got thicker too, and taller. And the stream got fuller, and more sonorous, with every hundred yards. Eventually we found ourselves in a completely different landscape. A watery, secluded dell. The sheep magically disappeared. Dissolved into the thickets and behind the trees. Running down over shallow stones, the stream flowed through the dell without urgency. Its sonorous wrillings reflecting perfectly off the leafy surroundings. Bright, but not too bright. With a fresh spatialness, audibly illuminating the contours of the natural space. Here, set below high steep banks of dense undergrowth, far away in the Quantocks of West Somerset, sound and time melded. Unified, into one well tempered flow. * The Lento box captured this scene tied to a tree during an unaccompanied overnight record in late October. We spent a long time in near total darkness testing out how different angles onto the stream sounded from various trees. We chose one set back from the stream, preferring this well balanced aural composition rather than a closer angle where the noise of the stream would drown out the subtle acoustic reflections of the space itself. The ambient sound levels were incredibly low. Listening back, we can sometimes hear the sheep, quietly moving about. After 17 minutes into the segment they wonder off, leaving only the stream to be heard, and the passing of time, in this natural secluded place.
Wed, December 11, 2024
248 Late morning air on Kilve beach
Kilve beach is edged by sheer cliffs and is made of rocks. Mostly small ones the size of oranges, up to medium sized ones the size of sofa cushions. To cross over them is unstable and you have to move like a penguin, which must be fun to watch if you aren't the one trying to stay upright. Jutting up between the smaller rocks are huge mattress sized boulders that are either massive flat topped rocks of unimaginable weight, or maybe if you could look below have no underside at all because they are the exposed surface of the Earth's crust. They make excellent resting points where you can temporarily stop from awkward walking and admire the amazing view. Having progressed some way along the beach we reached a smooth ridge of rock that ran for a long stretch perpendicular to the sea. It afforded us a path to walk on for a while. Either side of the ridge pools of stranded seawater had gathered beside piles of tangled seaweed. The atmosphere at this point had softened considerably, and there was in addition to being able to hear the sea a kind of silence too, immediately around us, so pure you could hear tiny bubbles popping in the rock pools. It had something to do with the rock cliffs of Kilve. They were doing something interesting. Cupping and reflecting sound, acting like the back wall of a theatre. Ahead the shoreline, though only about fifty yards away, was below the sound horizon owing to a very steep rake on the beach. This has the effect of mellowing the breaking waves, emphasising the weight of the waves rather than the brightness of the turbulent water. Occasionally a seventh wave breaks over a rocky outcrop directly centre of scene sending a plume of foaming suds high into the air and for a few moments above the sound horizon. * Far left of scene you can sometimes hear children playing on the beach with their dad, maybe looking for fossils. Some hardy birds that make a peeping call swoop around too. As the episode opens a tiny microlight aeroplane crosses the sky from left to right, going almost directly overhead. For some reason we love this sound, it seems to reflect that free feeling you get on a wide open beach. You may notice the tide is very gradually coming in over the episode, yielding more splashes and watery details from the breaking waves as time progresses.
Tue, December 03, 2024
247 Natural white noise from the firs of Kielder Forest
This is segment II from a 6-hour sound capture we took earlier this year at Kielder Forest in Northumberland. Recorded in spring, the environment is rich with birdsong, mainly willow warblers whose song is a short and very cheerful descending scale. We'd been walking along one of the rough paths that thread through the forest below the Kielder Observatory and had found exactly what we'd travelled up to this specific area to record. The hushing sound of wind in tall fir trees. Of course these are no ordinary trees. They are Grandis Firs. Vertically vast. Each the size of a 15 storey tower block, with huge drooping boughs draped in billions of tiny pine needles. Every needle catches in the wind and converts the energy into audible sound. Individually it's hard to imagine one could hear anything produced from one needle at all, but heard altogether, the sound is powerful. Deeply moving. Akin even to a spiritual experience. After finding a suitable tree to rest the Lento box against, we left it behind in the forest to record the scene alone, hoping the wind would not die down. The wind continued to blow in slow undulating waves. And the willow warblers continued to sing their lovely droopy songs, no doubt perched on the droopy boughs of the giant firs. But the trees and the birds were not the only aural presences in this part of the forest. There's a rushing stream, flowing from left to right of scene. It issues its own fresh bright sound to the interior space of the forest, as it rushes down into the valley to join the city-sized reservoir below. * At 18 minutes into this segment a plane flies over, but don't worry, it's relatively soft and gentle, flying high up above the clouds. It may initially be hard to tell whether the white noise is from the stream or wind in the firs in this recording. Over time, and as your ears adjust to the aural environment, the distinct qualities of the stream and the wind in the firs may resolve out. Both are highly spatial and texturally different. They often blend into one another, then part, like vails woven from different fabrics, billowing together in currents of air. ** Follow us on Bluesky or Ko-fi to keep up with Lento news. We recently celebrated a big Lento milestone!
Mon, November 25, 2024
246 Edgeland time by the Hythe Sound Mirror (sleep safe)
Turn right off the towpath beside the Military Canal, cross the footbridge, locate the stile that leads onto the hill, then follow the rough footpath up into some impressive edgeland. It's rough. Grassy. Very thistly. And as you ascend it feels hard. Increasingly wild. It's somewhere up here, we say, striding firm against the gradient. But the thing's not marked on the map. The Sound Mirror of Hythe is a large concrete parabolic dish. A giant ear, pointed out to sea, designed a hundred years ago, pre-RADAR for the early detection of incoming aircraft. Surely, we puff, a structure like this must stand out like a sore thumb? Well no. The steep ground has twists and folds. Ridges and bends that have to be walked. And no military installation worth its salt, however obsolete, is or should ever be easy to find. We eventually see huddled low in the grass a squat blockhouse. A derelict radio receiving station, according to one historical website. Then we see the dish itself. A concrete shape, nestled against a steep bank, sadly now in a terrible state, trees growing up through its collapsing sections. Up close the dish is behind substantial chainwire fencing and surrounded by what amounts to a moat of evil shoulder high stinging nettles. Whatever evidence there may be of the 'listening chamber' said to reside at the foot of the structure, is not possible to see. It may indeed be buried under broken concrete. We stood for a long time. Taking it all in. Despite its state, this dish is still active. Still reflecting and to some extent shaping the aural soundscape around it. Of course only from the listening chamber could one be an ear witness to what this structure was properly designed to do, but knowing that on some level it is still working, still channeling the soundscape from the sky above the sea, is, in a quiet way, thrilling. We found some shelter for the Lento box behind the radio receiving station, angling its view up the hill to capture both the near and far soundscapes. Near, wild wind whips through the edgeland grasses, a few crickets are cricketing. Mid-distance left, the sound mirror, about 40 yards. You can hear the wind when it catches in the trees growing in and around the dish and sometimes a yellowhammer. Right of scene is the hill rolling down into the valley. At the bottom the military canal. What filters in from behind the Lento box is from the coast and the ocean view. Toot toot of the steam railway that runs from Hythe, Dymchurch, Romney and Dungeness. Occasional distant echoes from circling seagulls and a construction site. Listening back we think some of these sounds at least are being reflected off the dish itself.
Mon, November 18, 2024
245 Night rain on the edge of the Quantock hills (sleep safe)
It was late. Everybody had gone to bed. The remote cottage where we were staying in the Quantock Hills still felt warm, even though the oil burner had knocked itself off a while ago. Despite this, the place had started to feel, well, a bit strange and I wasn't quite sure what the feeling was. I put the kettle on and the strange feeling went away. I made the tea, set the kettle back on its stand, stirred the pot, replaced the lid, forgot about the feeling. But then it was back. Intriguing. I stepped up out of the kitchen into the back porch where the burner room emitted a faint electrical hum and a rich smell of heating oil. Was it coming from in here? No. The snug lounge then. No. It was coming from behind where I'd just been, the back porch. I stood, stock still. Listening. The feeling was real. It was the presence of something. Not a thing or a spirit or anything like that. It was space. The feeling was of the hint of a space beyond the confines of the cottage. My hand went to the latch of the little back door. One bolt. Another. A chain too, all needing undoing. I lent back my weight and the door eased. With a woody squeak it jerked free from its jam. Swinging the door gently open, I stepped out. And there it was. The raw source of the feeling. The space that I had somehow sensed was enveloping the cosy and near silent cottage. A whole landscape. Audible by its near trees and far contours. Aural presences, stretching from the back door over miles up into the Quantocks. A night world shrouded in almost complete darkness, brushed by rain, and autumnal wind. This was the moment. This is what I heard.
Sat, November 09, 2024
244 Rocky West Somerset beach (high-definition sound)
We found this quiet place in West Somerset. Afternoon waves softly breaking along a rocky beach under October sunshine. The low landscape of Wales visible across the water. Lilstock. A port in bygone times, according to someone we met coming the other way. Now disused. A landscape of stony footpaths. Dense patches of shrubbery around outcrops of trees. Endless meadows and dry ditches. Fresh water streams and in the far distance on the clifftops, the boxy structures and cranes of Hinkley Point. Human made sound was present but what really drew our ears were the long periods of near pristine quiet. Quiet lets the aural detail of natural landscapes be truly seen. Here, a beach not of sand or shingle, but of piles of rocks and small boulders. We tied the Lento box to a tree off the footpath about thirty yards from the shoreline, and left it to record the breaking waves alone. A little cricket was cricketing in the grass to the left of the mics. For late October we were surprised. As we walked away we saw a large plastic blue barrel, captured by high tide rocks, roll its way loose and into the water. Then we watched it for a while set sail in the onshore breeze whilst exploring the rocks and boulders in the fresh afternoon air. When we returned an hour or so later to collect the Lento box we could still see the barrel. It'd floated up the coast past the mics. Listening back to the recording we could picture it, moving with the waves, from left to right of scene. One empty barrel that'd taken itself to sea, for a slow, silent voyage. * Let us know if you think this episode is sleep safe. We know there are sounds of people (mainly us) playing distantly on the beach and for some this sense of the presence of people may feel sleep safe, but others perhaps not.
Fri, November 01, 2024
243 Night callings in the Forest of Dean - interleaved worlds
It isn't often we hear strange calls coming out of our long overnight captures, but this was one. The dead of night deep in the Forest of Dean, and a call that from the quiet emptiness begins to echo. Human? Dog? Muntjac deer? All three, or none? Muntjac deer are commonly heard repeating a single harsh bark across rural landscapes at night though this sound doesn't quite match the sound signature of muntjac, nor indeed dog, or human. The calling persists over ten minutes, seemingly human, then changing into something very much not human. What it is we can't know. The sound comes from mid-left of scene. Whatever is making it is some distance from the microphones, which are tethered to the trunk of a huge oak tree growing beside a trickling brook hidden beneath dense undergrowth. To mid-right of scene is a country road that bisects the forest. Nocturnal cars occasionally speed through. The effect is curious, like a sudden wind is gathering in the trees, only to just as suddenly disappear. As the calling continues a tawny owl joins in. It hoots in that nervous kind of way they do sometimes, but then changes. Becomes a wavering quivering bleat, something like a new born lamb. It is fleeting. Then it is gone. Building ideas of what is in the world around us from this kind of highly spatial binaural soundscape, especially from times and locations few of us are used to being within, can lead our imaginations into strange places. Notions of the supernatural. Happenings and occurrences beyond the normal boundaries. However to the eye, and if it weren't pitch dark, the scene would bear no comparison to what the mind perceives of this forest through hearing. There'd be no overwhelming sense of wide open space, no possibility of reverberances or echoes or happenings going on far away. Indeed no concept of distance at all. This is because what surrounds the oak tree is of course more trees. Lovely huge trees, draped in broad waxy leaves so green and so numerous the eye simply accepts the image as one vast surface of textured colour. A vail. The green vails make this huge forest place, from an eye-s perspective, just what is close. A walled garden. Safe, because it is completely hidden from view. These very different perspectives of the same place reveal how hearing and sight fulfill substantially different roles when we are immersed in natural places. The hearing and sight we have was evolved in forest environments over millions of years. Within a world of green vails and visually obstructed views, sound travels freely, passes through leaves and around the solid structures of trees. Sound is spatial as sight is, has depth, width, and many other spatially sensitive qualities. It affords us with detailed information we need to gain a three dimensional spatial image of the world beyond what we can see. These complex interleaved vibrations land on our eardrums and are modelled spatially to alert us to the presence of things, what they
Tue, October 22, 2024
242 Kentish landscape time
Daytime contentedness can be found here. Between the rustling leaves and trees of Folkestone Warren that rolls greenly down towards the sea. We couldn't have known when we set up the Lento box under hot early August sunshine that the next day of recording would bring such strong breezes. This strip of natural Kentish land is made of green plunging wilderness. It has a campsite next to a rocky and sandy beach. There's a cliff top cafe too, from where you can see France on a clear day. After stopping for a cup of tea, follow one of the steep paths, down into a sea of green. Find a gap between the trees. Try listening for the actual sea. For echoes of children, distantly playing on the beach. For a passing train on the hidden railway. The buzzard. Slowly circling. Wind that waves in the branches, shakes and rustles the leaves, may not to the eye look particularly calm. And yet to the ear, these movements sound calm. We definitely feel a physical response to strong undulating breezes as they press and sigh through banks of trees. This daytime section capturing the sound-feel of this place reveals how time passes here, an ordinary weekday in early August.
Mon, October 14, 2024
241 Natural white noise from Folkestone Warren beach at night (sleep safe)
An hour of uninterrupted white noise. Naturally occurring and fully spatial. Captured by the Lento box last weekend from a tree overlooking the beach under Folkestone Warren. Low soft rumbling of the crashing waves. Mid-range curtains of dark grey-blue backwash, that seem to billow and shimmer like hanging fabrics. Fine layers of crisper whiter noise, formed from the frothing and fizzing sea water as it is churned and blown by the night wind. The subtle hiss as countless leaves catch in the undulating wind. The scene is of the wide open beach. And of the tide, very gradually going out. A breeze, quite firm at around 18 knotts, is whisking up the waves. The place is entirely deserted. It's around 4:30 am. Several hours until dawn breaks. Being a raw location recording there are a few planes that traverse the sky, though their sound easily dissolves between the waves. Something, perhaps a small mammal, pads up to the tree holding the mics, then carries on to wherever it's going. A dark bush cricket occasionally starts up as well. It's quite late in the season for them. The ground underneath the tree holding the mics is layered in dry leaves left over from the summer. Just ahead, down a steep drop, the ground transitions into large jumbled boulders. This strip of loose rock is in range of the high tide, and probably is semi-submerged when the spring tide coincides with a North Sea surge. During the day people pick their way over these rocks in search of fossils. Folkestone is so we're told a fossil rich area. Our objective for travelling back to this beach location in Folkestone was to capture the reflected sounds the high tide makes as it laps around the boulders under the trees. We witnessed these sounds earlier in August, but ran out of time to properly record them. Returning last weekend to try again we found there was an 18 knott wind whipping everything up, and a different and wilder seascape. What we have managed to capture though is how the receding tide in this particular location produces a rich and very stable source of uninterrupted natural white noise. Naturally occurring white noise sounds so simple and yet is infinitely complex. These seemingly contradictory qualities may be why natural white noise from real places like this promote both wakeful concentration and vigilant restfulness, that unconscious conscious state of mind where you seem to be able to perceive everything around you as one fulfilling thought. A thought so in and of itself complete, it frees you from the need to think of anything else.
Mon, October 07, 2024
240 Wide time in the Kielder Forest (sleep safe with distant geese)
Last week we shared wide time captured from a North Norfolk beach as night fell. This week it's wide time from the vast interior of the Kielder Forest. Human-free night vastness is an experience so out of reach to us, and indeed to most people, that travelling with the Lento box to bring it back in the raw is always top of our list. Kielder is a mostly uninhabited landscape made of hills, trees and water. It is England's largest fir plantation on the north east border with Scotland. You may remember we travelled there in May to find and capture new episodes. This section of time is from around 3am. The Lento box is recording alone laid against the trunk of a fir tree on the east side of the 9 mile long reservoir. The sound landscape of Kielder at night is extremely spatial and delicate. Made up of subtle changing movements of air over miles of fir trees. Of occasional nocturnal flying geese. Of echoes, layered upon echoes. Of tiny twigs and branches shifting as the trees gradually droop their boughs in response to the night cool. But these sounds though precious are not of themselves what makes the experience of being immersed within the Kielder Forest so special. And they are not the main aural presence we left the Lento box out alone to witness. What we wanted to capture from within Kielder above anything else, was the phenomenon of wide time. Wide time is not of itself audible. It's made of nothing. Or more accurately, emptiness. To gain a sense of wide time you have to allow yourself to mentally tune into it. And that takes time. And a quiet place to listen. And decent headphones or equivalent. And a long form spatial audio recording that comes directly from the natural emptiness of Kielder Forest at night. A place where wide time happens.
Sun, September 29, 2024
239 Intertidal zone - night approaching
Holme Dunes, Norfolk. At low tide, and with night approaching, we finally managed to set up the Lento box on a tripod on the sand, mics facing out to sea. It was the curlews at dusk, framed within the vastness of the empty beach, that we wanted to capture as a photograph in sound. It felt good to have reached a spot to record, after a lot of walking. It was though still only the mid-point of the intertidal zone. A very low tide. The mid-point proved interesting. Such a low tide leaves exposed an enormous area of flat hard sand. The landscape seems to guide the sound of the sea into your ears over long distances, and from very wide angles. It's what we love the most. That feeling of being very very small in a vast open and entirely naturally formed space. Naturally formed, naturally murmurating, and with magical fleeting calls of curlew. We explored the area around the box for a while, then realised we had a problem. Light. The levels had been dropping while we'd been walking. Ten minutes into the record we turned round from the end of the sunset and realised the land behind us had gone almost completely black. Getting up the beach would be ok but finding the narrow and indistinct footpaths where we'd come through the dunes was definitely not going to be ok. There were no street lights or navigation points. But the atmosphere was so exhilarating, so precious, we let the box record for just a few more minutes. We then scooped it up and hastily began the next mission, to find our way back. This is why episode 239 is shorter than usual. Shorter but we feel important to share because it conveys some of the sound-feel of being out in a vast intertidal zone, empty other than the curlew, with night fast approaching.
Sun, September 22, 2024
238 Harvest fields aside The Peddars Way (100th location)
On the breeze, rich scents of hot Norfolk farmland. In the air, tiny wippling birds. Some swallows? Across the field, and across the next, a combine harvester large as a house. And quick as a car. It sails low over the far meadow, like a paddle steamer on a bright green sea. Standing on the Peddars Way, Lento box in hand, we've stopped to take in the heat, and to listen. Wide carpets of crickets are cricketing all around the meadow grass. They're happy. Baking like us, under a hot midday sun. We search for a tree. For a natural tripod. We scan the thickets that line this ancient route. It is quite a silent process, and the box swings gently. It's waiting for us to find it a good spot. The spot it needs is specific. An aural point in the landscape where everything meaningful can not just be heard but heard in a spatially balanced way. An aural meeting point where the box will "see" the whole landscape as a sound photograph. Eventually we find a very old oak tree completely covered in hairlike moss. It's amazing. Very carefully we rest the box between two intersecting boughs and check how the sound photograph is going to "look" through a pair of stereo headphones. Good we quietly say, providing this breeze doesn't ruffle the surrounding leaves too much. The weather seems fair and stable, so we leave the box to record alone. * We captured this sound-scene (our 100th unique location and 25th county ) on Norfolk farmland on a hot July day. The old oak tree stands on the Peddars Way, a 49-mile National Trail which follows the route of a Roman Road. Tiny birds flit and flutter amongst the thickets under the wide sky where rumbles of distant military jets can sometimes be heard. A combine harvester is at work far right of scene. If you're able to hear high pitched crickets, their sound sometimes wafts in an out too from the meadow. Red kites overhead too. Thanks for listening, and to Lento supporters who've helped us to bring 100 UK landscape locations in high definition spatial sound to this free podcast service.
Sun, September 15, 2024
237 Sighing sea beyond the Warren
It is first light. Birds are waking. Beginning to fill the air with sonorous sounds of life. A few dark bush crickets are still cricketing, just, though soon they'll go quiet for the day. The view is of green. More green. And yet more green. A whole valley of thickly growing thickets, trees, and dense shrubs, slowly emerging into visual reality under an increasingly luminous dawn sky. Another form of energy that illuminates this steep verdant valley, is from the sea about a third of a mile down from the recording location. It's acoustic presence perfuses the air, just as light does from the sky. The aural daylight if we can call it that, is brightest at high tide, and darkest at low. Sea light does not flow evenly as light from the sky does. It flows in slow undulating breaths. Follows every contour of the ground. Brushes through every tree, branch, leaf and shrub. Reminds us that like the sky, a huge mass of something unimaginably huge, is there, and moving, beyond our view. * This is the third segment from the new series of sound landscape recordings we made last month at The Warren in Folkestone. Episode 235 was from the dead of night, and this segment is how dawn sounded at the same location. ** NOT sleep safe due to noisy gulls and wood pigeons!
Mon, September 09, 2024
236 Sunlit beach below the Warren
Capturing the experience and 'sound-feel' of crashing waves is always a challenge. Strong on-shore breezes and the unbridled energy of thousand ton waves breaking over unyielding rock can simply be too much for sensitive microphones. Yet as we sit on the concrete sea defences, bathed in hot afternoon August sun, waiting for the first tingles of cold sea spray to land on our legs, the experience is as serene as it is thrilling. How can this be? Something huge, heavy and aurally overwhelming is also serenely calming and relaxing? Our ears hear the landscape around us and let us feel its space and physicality. Hearing, in a way, is a kind of touching. Given the power and tumult of these waves as they break over the rocks, it isn't possible to be bodily touching them, but we can touch their weight and mass through our ears. Layers of white noise produced by crashing waves, rising and falling, folding over each other, straddling us with their weight, reveals how mere vibrations in the air that land on our eardrums are instantly sensed and translated into physical responses. Responses that are felt as a result of being heard. This is what we mean by 'sound feel'. We might say the thrill is the head's response, the excitement that comes with loudness and chaos. The serenity is the bodily response. Nerves, bones and muscles, relaxing, as they do when massaged. So sitting on the sea wall facing crashing waves, hot in the sunshine and still in earshot of the odd cricket hiding in the seagrass, is a bath and a massage. Wild sweet peas dancing in the breeze on an empty path. Buzzards circling overhead. We feel drawn to this ragged edge of land and to capture it as an audio experience that can be re-experienced when we cannot physically be there. * This piece of time we captured in early August from a nearby location to last week's episode (235) from Folkestone in Kent. This stretch of exposed beach at the foot of The Warren. Two perspectives on the same stretch of coast called the Strait of Dover. Without the sea, The Warren would not exist in the aurally rich way it does.
Tue, September 03, 2024
235 Night crickets above distant crashing waves (sleep safe)
Welcome back to a new Lento season of captured quiet. Sound landscapes from real places. This segment of spatial audio, best through headphones, was captured on the Kent coast in early August from beside a winding path in a steeply wooded area of Folkestone called the Warren. France is visible from this elevated spot. Around half a mile below, is the beach and the crashing waves. It is midnight. The ground here is sandy and dry. The only way through is the path which winds down and around and down again, almost endlessly, between trees huddled behind thick shrubs and blackberry bushes. Eventually you come out by a railway line. It seems out of place so close to the sea. Before you reach the beach, there's a cluster of tall trees with long rope swings. The environment is so green and steep and tangled that it has a uniquely soft sound feel. Here, on this August night, dark bush crickets form the main sound-scene against a back drop of distant crashing waves. One stridulates close to the Lento box. Another type of cricket, lower in tone, is audible over to the left. We have not heard this type of night cricket in England before. A few trains pass in the valley below, and a few planes too, though Folkestone has generally quite a quiet sky. To get the true aural essence from this audio, which is from an exceptionally soft and quiet location where you'd need to strain your ears to hear everything that is there, try to listen with headphone volume set so you can just hear the murmurings of the sea below. Find somewhere quiet to listen to this episode and you'll get more from it.
Sat, August 24, 2024
234 Wild and exposed places - Intermission 4
Welcome to this final intermission of August 2024, a specially blended episode of soundscapes from wild and exposed places taken from the last year of Lento. The first three sound-scenes reveal aural views of the outside world seen from within interior places. A coastal hotel room, the belfry of an ancient church, and inside a bird hide. The final sound-scene is of an exposed estuary by Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex, and a slow passing ship. Each portrays the essences of wild places. 214 Storm over hotel peninsula A birds ear view over Plymouth in the far south west of England. This is how Storm Kathleen sounded from behind the huge plate glass window of a comfortable cushioned room on the fourth floor of a hotel. The hotel overlooks a district called The Hoe, where one of the original Eddystone Lighthouses now stands. the wind was fierce, whistling almost singing through the window seals. A blended soundscape, formed from the interior acoustic of the hotel room and the wide open windswept night beyond. 200 Windswept night in the belfry of Rye Church Up steep ladders on the top platform of the belfry inside Rye Church, the ancient clock counts through this small night hour. Its regular sound blends with long and undulating gusts of fresh sea air. Air that's travelled, over miles of sand, shingle and marshland, from out on the open sea. Moving air sighs between the shuttered rafters and rattles the steel flagpole outside on the castellated parapet wall. Knocks the dead weight of a loose slab of stonework out on the belfry roof. 194 Inside a bird hide The atmosphere inside a bird hide is quite unusual, as interior spaces go. Low wind moaning in the drooping wires between telegraph poles. Whispering rushes and siffing seed heads of marsh grasses. Indistinguishable shifting murmurings, of the surrounding landscape, blown in through low letterbox windows. To the ear there is a lot of outside to be heard inside a bird hide. A fleeting curlew. A humming propeller plane. A distant pair of passing footsteps on the gravel towpath. 196 Estuary bleak passing ship Warm inside an all-weather coat and facing out across the water. Sat, boots wedged against the top ridge of the slanted seawall. There's rain in the air. Time to take in this wild estuary place. Right of scene the small Essex town of Burnham-on-Crouch. Directly ahead across the water Wallasea Island. Left of scene wild swirling water stretches seven miles to the North Sea. Sit tight, here on the seawall. This is empty time, to listen to the landscape and a slow passing ship.
Sat, August 17, 2024
233 Rain - Intermission 3
Welcome to intermission 3 of 4 and another specially blended soundscape taken from the last year of Lento. The theme is rain. Gorgeous, refreshing, soothing rain. Four sound-scenes that reveal the way falling rain varies in texture and feel across four different locations. 204 Rain falls on steep craggy woodland (*sleep safe) Fresh rain. Fresh woodland rain, from Miller's Dale in Derbyshire. From a hedgehog's perspective. Low on the forest floor, amidst the leaf litter, and the tangled ivy. As the new day began to dawn, the Lento box listened, Faithfully capturing the aural experience of the falling rain on dense woodland in the Derbyshire Dales. This rain can be heard falling onto wide waxy leaves against many layers of more diffused rain falling onto hundreds of tall trees, and a white noise vail rising up from the river flowing over rocks in the valley below. 228 Summer rain under the wisteria (*sleep safe) Nocturnal rain falling over many little back gardens, in waves of varying intensities. we wanted to hear what rain sounded like when the city had fallen completely quiet, and the Lento box was exposed, sheltered only under plants. We waited for a night where persistent rain was forecast and left the Lento box out, beneath a large wisteria plant, close to an old Victorian brick wall. This sound-view of rain is shaped by the way each drop lands on the wisteria leaves immediately above and around the microphones, the intimate reflections caused by the garden wall, against a backdrop of more diffused rain landing over shrubs, a yard to the left, and many gardens beyond. 197 December rain light to moderate (*sleep safe) Captured from only a matter of about ten yards from the previous segment, this rain sounds entirely different. Different because the gardens are in deep winter and the air Temperature was only around 7 degrees. Enough to drift the ice cold raindrops and ruffle the leading edge of the wide tarpaulin that we'd stretched over our back yard for shelter. You can really feel how each falling drop heightens the spatialness and emptiness of this calm city night scape. 189 Night rain falls on a drystone wall (*sleep safe) This rainy sound view was recorded from the top of a drystone wall overlooking fields of nocturnal sheep, in the North Yorkshire market town of Settle. Rain comes and goes. It's a very ordinary field in many ways, and not far from a very ordinary sounding B road with some occasional night traffic on it. Combined with the odd soft arching plane, the sound view exudes a pleasantly harmonious aural fabric that is soporific a
Sun, August 11, 2024
232 Waves and shorelines - Intermission 2
Welcome to intermission 2, the second specially blended soundscape from the past year of Lento. This week's theme is waves and shorelines. There are four sections that blend effortlessly into each other. The sound-view into each watery place lasts around eleven minutes and enables you to compare and contrast the wide variations in aural detail from place to place, beach to beach, and at different times of the day and night. 185 Onshore breeze on Chesil beach Chesil beach has an astonishingly powerful aural presence. The Lento sound camera is pointing directly out too sea, about fifteen yards from the breaking waves, capturing the deep visceral sound feel of this steep and stark Beach. The heft of the receding waves, as they haul back huge quantities of heavy spherical shingle. The advancing waves, curling and then breaking into white sound walls of spray. And the ever flowing on-shore breeze. Through listening you can feel the weight, shape, and rhythm of this 18 mile long beach on the Jurassic coast of Southern England. 216 Sat on the sand of East Looe beach A perfect spot for an uninterrupted cinematic sound-view of crashing waves on East Looe beach in Cornwall. Waves in all their crisp textural detail. Can you hear which way the longshore drift goes? It can take a few minutes. The waves feel powerful in this spot on the sand. Sometimes thunderous. Thunderous, and yet calming at the same time. the presence of the seawall (behind) and pier (to right of scene) gives this beach an unusually enclosed sound feel. 188 Rock seat on Rye Harbour beach Near a limpet covered wall, beaten into shape by high tide waves and squally weather, are some rocks submerged in shingle. Rye Harbour shingle. Advancing waves keep rolling in. Splashing and breaking, as much onto each other as they do onto the smart grey contoured shingle. Rye Harbour feels as wild as it is panoramically empty. So enjoy some empty time, just listening to the crashing waves as the tide slowly goes out. 211 Nothe Fort at night - quiet swirling waves These are lazy waves. Rolling and slooping over half submerged rocks. Being the dead of night the quiet in this place is Pristine. The Lento box is recording from a tree looking out over the water beside Nothe Fort in Weymouth. The sound view of these waves, against such a perfect backdrop of solid nocturnal silence, is highly spatial and aurally clear. It's why we've travelled back to this precise location twice to capture their sound.
Sun, August 04, 2024
231 Streams and rivers - Intermission 1
Welcome to our first intermission episode. August is an especially busy recording month for us so while we are away, we want to share with you some specially blended soundscapes from the past year of Lento. This week's theme is streams and rivers. There are four sections that blend effortlessly into each other. The sound-view into each watery place lasts around eleven minutes. 209 Downstream of the old mill Steep meadows all about, sloping down into a water meadow in the Derbyshire hills. The water's running fast. So much rain. The woodland birds are singing across the valley in their full spring song. This is dawn, on a wonderfully bright spring morning. 184 River rilling through Millers Dale Here's the night sound of the river Wye flowing through Miller's Dale in the Derbyshire Dales. Open country water. Cool. Refreshing. Consistent. 226 Perhaps a perfect upland stream This stream follows a country road high in the empty hills above the small town of Ceri in the Welsh county of Powys. We've shared many sections from this 2019 recording over the four years of Lento. The area feels magical, being very near to the Ceri Ridgeway (Kerry in English) an ancient route used for trading between Wales and England. This section of time is from the dead of night where no wildlife is audible, the entire focus is of the stream, and the acoustical properties of the hidden dell ankle deep in dry leaves. 203 Dartmoor stream Below a stone circle high on Dartmoor called the Nine Maidens there is this racing stream. It threads down through steep sloping pastures, enters an area of dense forest, and Becomes enmeshed with the sound signatures of tall, reflective, overhanging trees.
Sat, July 27, 2024
230 Murmuring firs of Kielder Forest
Fir trees don't have what you might call normal leaves. Their leaves are needles. Each tree possesses many needles, too many to count. Especially when the height of these trees ranges from 12 to 23 stories high. Concentrated in these myriad tiny needles, is a wonderful and special power. Position yourself deep within a fir forest, with even the slightest of breezes blowing high above, and you'll feel it. You'll notice it first as a sound in your ears, but that is only where it starts. The softest, the most velvety, the most spatially rich sound imaginable. Without realising it, the sound passes from your ears to become a sigh In your chest and lungs. Further it flows, permeating through your whole body. The more you tune yourself into the sound of the fir trees, the more you still your own motion, the more you detach from the need to think of anything else, the more the waves of relief flow. The sensation is real, a palpable response to the aural awe diffusing down into the spaces beneath the firs. Fir trees we feel create such powerful and yet enchantingly delicate sounds, that since experiencing them high in the hills of Dentdale last summer we knew we had to try to capture more. More fir trees in more different contexts, across more ground. That meant we had ultimately to go to the Kielder Forest, the largest fir plantation in England. This sound capture is from a location in the Kielder Forest called Forest Drive. After reaching the area and then following rough tracks cut through the forest over several miles, we reached a place where a huge section of plantation was visible processing down the valley. Row, after row, after row of tall fir trees. The effect was enchanting, and fixed us to the spot. As we stood looking the wind began to rise in the treetops. The sound came. Velvet brown waves, of physically rejuvenating sound. It took our breaths away. If you are able to find a quiet and still spot to listen to this episode with a pair of good headphones or Airpods with noise cancellation, the Lento microphones have managed to faithfully capture quite a lot of the aural perfection that existed inside this huge forest, on that warm and blowy spring day earlier this year.
Sat, July 20, 2024
229 Dusk dissolves to night in the cathedral of trees
On a warm May evening deep in the Forest of Dean, the sound of dusk is alive with birdsong from many different species. The air literally fizzes with the energy produced by avian communications. Their calls and songs echo over long distances, they reflect and bounce from tree trunk to tree trunk, reverberate and dissipate. It's the sheer quantity of solid surfaces that give this aural environment the quality of being inside a cathedral. A cathedral of trees. As dusk advances the light levels drop. The soundscape thins, and simplifies. Many species stop singing, leaving aural space for the wood pigeons and song thrush. The lower overall sound levels mean the humming of countless bees and other insects can be heard. Noise from human activity seep and filter into the inner forest space too. It's a sound environment that's now leaning, to one side, and starting to reveal the tawny owls. Night nearing, the strange call of the woodcock on its roding flight enters into your sound view. Half way between a quack and a call and ending with a squeak. Now the forest is wavering on the edge of reality. Rumbles from passing planes are captured within the cathedral like voids, and continue to reverberate as if the trees are purposefully holding onto the sound. Perhaps these old and ancient trees aren't sure what these sounds are? Maybe the trees are rolling the rumbles around within their leaves and branches, as we do with our hands and fingers to better understand a strange textured stone we pick up on a beach. After darkness falls, reality falls too. Nothing makes sense anymore. The forest has become a hall of sound mirrors. The rumbles, the echoes, the distant hoots of owls, the shapeless calls of animals, billow thinly like floating vails of grey. There are the crisp trickles of a stream, hidden under tangled vines. And the heavy movement of several ground hugging creatures, perhaps badger, perhaps wild bore, grubbing about and snuffling for bits and pieces to eat. But what seems to be there, throughout, or perhaps issuing from underneath the land itself, is a deep, cavernous smouldering. Could this be the sound of the Earth itself?
Sat, July 13, 2024
228 Summer rain under the wisteria (sleep safe)
Earlier this week we left the Lento box out to record overnight. Persistent rain was forecast from midnight onwards after a spell of dry weather. We never lose interest in the sound of falling rain. Being outside during a shower invokes strong feelings that must have evolved over millions of years. To make these local rain recordings we normally set the Lento box on a tripod underneath a tarpaulin that's stretched out over the back yard. The tarpaulin acts like a horizontal cinema screen, catching the drops on an X Y axis and producing the type of rainscape sound that we've shared in many other episodes. This time though we wanted to hear what the rain sounded like when the Lento box was exposed, sheltered only under plants. We set the Lento box beyond the yard, close to an old Victorian brick wall. The space immediately around the box was dense with leafy foliage from a wisteria plant growing along the top of the wall. It provided good shelter, or so we thought. The recording worked. The Lento box, while completely soaked, did reliably capture the wide and shifting soundscapes throughout the night, perfectly. Falling rain, as it came down over many little back gardens in waves of varying intensities and droplet sizes, determined by atmospheric conditions high above. But being so exposed to the elements, and sensitive to all kinds of sound, large heavy rain drops hit the box that fell between the wisteria's abundant leaves. Each drop landed on the box with a sharp tap. Hundreds of taps, maybe more than a thousand. Each drawing the ear's attention to the microphone box itself, which as with a camera should never be in shot. Our choice was to scrap the recording, make a better overhead rain absorption solution and try again another night. Or listen through every second with a keen ear and a micro editing tool to unpick each drop that struck the box. Of course we did the latter and it took six hours. Crazy perhaps, but as we cleaned off ten seconds, and then half a minute, and then two minutes, then five, the process developed a momentum of its own. Like restoring a damaged painting bit by bit, gradually restoring to clarity the spacious and detailed sound image of the night. The countless raindrops as they fell onto the wisteria and the leafy shrubs. A meditation on one unique night, of falling rain.
Sun, July 07, 2024
227 Light rain on the headland (sleep safe)
Being out on a headland is an experience as fresh as it is freeing. Fresh because these steep craggy places resound continuously, without end, with the effects of ocean and wild weather. Freeing, because they let you feel with all your senses, the reality of the world. A world seven tenths covered in water. Like bathing in forest sound created by the micro-turbulances of air moving through countless leaves and branches, a headland soundscape is also formed from panoramic layers of natural white noise, created by the movement of water over countless rocks. Or should we call it white sound? Noise is usually associated with what is unwanted. These noises are wanted. So good, so therapeutic, that we feel it's worth travelling long distances with the Lento box to find them, and record them. The tricky bit is capturing the layers of white sounds from the landscape when we get to it. Headlands are windy locations, and the noise of wind cuffing in the microphones is what we work to avoid. The sound has to be from the landscape itself, and not from the microphone baffles. Here is another passage of time we recorded earlier this year at the headland in West Looe, Cornwall. Light rain falling delicately, and spatially, onto new green leaves, against a wide panoramic backdrop of well dispersed ocean breakers. It is a night landscape entirely free of human made noise. Between the slow undulating washes, a passing seabird can be heard mid-way through the capture. * You can hear daybreak from this same location in episode 221 . ** Our last four episodes have been *sleep safe*. If we have helped you rest this month, could you buy us a coffee ?
Sun, June 30, 2024
226 Perhaps a perfect upland stream (sleep safe)
Perhaps it is, though you may know of one even more perfect. This stream follows a country road high in the empty hills above the small town of Ceri in the Welsh county of Powys. We've shared many sections from this 2019 recording over the four years of Lento. The area feels magical, being very near to the Ceri Ridgeway (Kerry in English) an ancient route used for trading between Wales and England. This section of time is from the dead of night where no wildlife is audible, the entire focus is of the stream, and the acoustical properties of the hidden dell ankle deep in dry leaves. We often think about what it is that makes the sound of a perfect stream. The particular combinations of musical tones maybe, as the water flows down over uneven rocks. The spatial details that make it one coherent sound-scene, panoramic, from far left to far right. The unique blending of white noise properties, acoustic reflections and other phenomenon created by the complexity of the physical space itself. Every one of these audible aspects are seen by our listening mind to form the sound image we hear. Every detail matters in the composition of the audible image, and aural phenomenon of a perfect stream. if you've not yet tried listening to Lento through headphones or Airpods how about giving it a go. Phone and room speakers can't convey the spatial content central to Lento recordings and that are key to the sound-feel that we call 'captured quiet'. The quiet is what hangs between the voids in a long-form spatial soundscape. It is only perceivaable with headphones or Airpods and it can take ten minutes or more to begin to sense its presence.
Sun, June 23, 2024
225 Night suburban garden - quiet sound brutalism (sleep safe)
Night rain, as it falls onto a quiet suburban garden, has a cool and spacious sound-feel. It seems to help focus the mind's eye onto the presence of objects and surfaces that without the rain would simply not exist, to the ear. Even to the eye, in such murky darkness, these objects and surfaces are not things that make sense in and of themselves. This nocturnal suburban soundscape, stippled with falling droplets, reverberates with the ever-present ever wide city rumble. City rumble is not a warm nor a cold sound, and has no shape other than always to be the same shape. It's always there. Always present. Permeates every inch of outdoor space with a steady unchanging and strangely indeterminate aural glow. It has something to do with all the buildings. Something to do with all the distant machines that whirr and whine as we travel about, keep warm, keep cool, keep moving. Something to do with urban life. A little back garden in North East London is such an ordinary place from a soundscape perspective. There is nothing here to peek the interest in conventional terms. You'd probably never hear a place like this through any normal broadcast audio channel. And so the idea of a quiet soundscape, a quiet brutalist soundscape, made of layers of indeterminate aural glows, echoes of indeterminate activity, reverberances of empty spaces under a wide an empty sky, must make its indeterminate way to the edgeland of the audio world. And that is here. On Lento. A quiet brutalist soundscape from one rainy night in March.
Sun, June 16, 2024
224 Shallow river under an open sky (sleep safe)
Back we go again to Miller's Dale in the Derbyshire hills. To this quiet spot, beside a shallow river wrilling. There's a country lane, and a steep grassy bank down to the river where an old tree grows. The tree, so gnarled, and with an unusually stout trunk, must have grown here for decades. Maybe even a century, or more. At about five feet from the ground it split into two almost equally thick boughs from which winding branches reached out over the river. Covered in moss. Dense with summer leaves. Something had drawn us to this place. We climbed down because we wanted to hear how the river sounded from underneath the tree. It wasn't easy. We had to hold on to the trunk to stop us rolling down into the water. From underneath we found the leaves worked like a walled garden, cradling and reflecting the aural qualities of the swiftly moving water. It felt like a perfect place to sit and listen, so We felt around the moss and hung the Lento mics beneath one of the thick boughs and left it to record through the night. This section is from the dead of night. The river is flowing steadily. Steadily over the time worn rocks. Above the tree the open sky must have been thick with cloud. Almost all the wildlife is asleep, or making noise that is hidden by the sound of the water. Aeroplanes over fly from time to time, ploughing their nocturnal ways above the clouds from one civilisation to another. The English landscape, however rural looking, is very often aurally speaking not wilderness but edgeland. This is a real sound landscape that represents the world as it is. Whilst listening back to prepare this episode we heard tawny owls calling to each other, from far across the fields.
Sat, June 08, 2024
223 Birdsong in deep forest ambience
Whilst walking up towards the observatory in the Kielder forest, we passed large areas of cleared woodland. "Fallen in the great storm of 2021" a passing forester explained in the afternoon sunshine. In some sections, the trees had been cut and stacked. Rows of tree trunks that smelled deliciously rich with the resin-y smell of Christmas trees. We found the smell instantly relaxing, as if it reduced blood pressure just by inhaling it. We stopped on a steep rough path by a rushing burn, to take in the pristine quiet ambience. Banks of wind were brushing across the high tree tops. Grand firs, whose countless fine needles instantly convert wind energy into rich brown sound. The rushing water permeated the surrounding space with what we feel is the cleanest white noise mist we've come across this year. Capturing this sound scene was something we just had to do. Finding a suitable tree for the Lento box by the path wasn't too difficult. Bathed in the white noise mist and the brown sound of the tall fir trees, we left the microphones alone to capture this passage of time. Slightly to the left of scene is the rushing burn. Fresh water speeding shallowly over steep flinty stones. High above and undulating from right to left of scene, wind brushes the upper tree tops, filling the air with waves of softly hushing sound. Various songbirds are singing, wrens and blackbirds but willow warblers seem to be very common in the Kielder Forest. Their song while quite fleeting is a lovely droopy descent down a simple scale of notes. It's very similar to the chaffinch song, only purer, and without the musical somersault that the chaffinsh seems to finish on.
Sat, June 01, 2024
222 The trees of Kielder Forest before dawn
In our quest to capture the pure sound of trees in true spatial quiet, we have without realising it, been following a long and winding path that has ultimately led us here. The Kielder Forest. It's a remote place for England. A place where the sound of trees can properly be felt and heard. A place where millions upon millions of trees grow together, across an area of 250 square miles (400 square kilometres). Planning this recording trip involved OS Explorer map OL42. We also checked flight paths and road maps to try to guess what extent human made noise might filter into the forest. From the sparse few roads and giant area of uninhabited nothingness, the location looked on-paper like a very quiet place indeed. Ideal we hoped for capturing the real sound of trees, in high definition audio. When we say the 'real sound of trees', we mean the spatial sound of trees in an ever undulating wind. Wind that shifts in strength between soft to medium. Ideally with most variations around the 10 to 20 knot range and that peaks every now and then with slowly rising and slowly falling currents in the 25 to 30 knot range. For the spatial aspect, the trees need to be over a very wide area, and very tall. To be spruce and fir, because these make the sound-feel that we are most interested in. Evocative deep brown hushing. Somewhat optimistic for these very particular conditions, we travelled up country and ventured deep into the forest. We found a location near the dam of Kielder Water, and in driving rain left the Lento box tied to a tree. Then returned to the village some way outside the forest to stay the night. It always feels strange to leave the box behind, alone in such a vast place. Now we are home and listening back, what it captured is magical to us. Here is the period of time from 3am to just before 4am when the majority of spring birds begin to sing in first light. The wind strengths aren't strong, but there is an undulating wind that can be clearly heard in the tall spruce and fir trees as the banks of wind move across this region of the forest. Echoes of owls can be heard too, distant geese and a strange barking which we can't quite identify. Delicate layers of bird song gradually begin to build as the time approaches 4am. * As always with Lento listen with headphones or Airpods to properly hear the full range of aural qualities we strive to capture and share.
Sat, May 25, 2024
221 An hour on the headland
Time to take in a view. A panorama that changes with the wind and the tide. It's about six o'clock in the morning, and the Lento box has been recording through the night, tied to a windswept tree facing directly out towards Looe Island and the English channel. The scene has an aural horizon formed of disapated ocean breakers, crashing against rocks far below. Blended layers of panoramic undulating natural white, grey and brown noise. Close by, newly sprouted leaves flutter around the microphone box in fast currents of blustery air. As the gusts subside, a softer, calmer view of the headland is revealed. There's a fresh bracing feel to this place. Spring birds sing and call. Land birds such as chaffinches, wrens, robins, chiffchaffs and wood pigeons. Some sea birds too, herring gulls and possibly some oyster catchers. It's an exposed location. Unsheltered from the elements blowing in from the vast and empty sea. Unsheltered, and so thoroughly enlivening.
Mon, May 20, 2024
220 Empty night Cornish air (sleep safe and best with headphones / Airpods)
West Looe at night. A Cornish town on the edge of the English Channel. An edge where human things end and emptiness begins. We've shared a few captured sound scenes from here over the last month. This is the one if you're searching for the sound-feel of long, true night quiet. What is true night quiet? Capturing rich and detailed audible quiet, in contrast to dead meaningless silence, is what we're always trying to do with Lento. By rich and detailed we mean those aural essences, those often very delicate sound signatures, that give a place its own sound feel, and that aren't actually created by anyone. The sound feel of a place is formed and shaped by what's in it, its geography and its weather. On this part of the Cornish coast we found very little human made noise during the night. No aircraft overflying. Next to nothing on the roads. Just long stretches of time where the softness of the place's sound-feel can be experienced with clarity. This episode is a section of time from around 3am in early April. A blustery weather front was blowing in from the sea, billowing along the narrow lanes of West Looe, cuffing in the roof gaps, whistling somewhere in a distant chimney pot. Fresh. Very spatial. A true and uncluttered piece of time. Here are our top tips about how to re-experience this captured quiet. Find a relatively peaceful spot and listen through headphones or airpods. If you have Apple Airpod Pros set the volume just over half way at about 60%. This closely matches the sound levels that would have been landing on your eardrums by actually being at the location. Volume levels do vary between headphones so we can't give reference levels for other types of ear phones. Having now tested decent noise cancellation we can say when it works it can be like turning the lights off to watch a film. Clean listening, largely free of extraneous noise. Nothing beats a quiet room with a comfortable couch though, if you have one, and a pair of velvet headphones.
Sun, May 12, 2024
219 Country meadow summer breeze
The time has come for hot sun. Hot sun and basking. Hot sun and basking, and listening to crickets. And just sitting, amongst the crickets taking it all in. This sound scene is of the landscape around Arley station in Shropshire. Under high trees in full leaf. Golden fields as far as the eye can see, glowing in the afternoon sun. Farmland gold. And farmland birds. Bobbing crows. Wood pigeons. And a buzzard. Distant farm machinery working the land. Distant children playing beyond the station. Distant echoes, that roll across the horizon from a departed steam train that can be heard in episode 187 . Down the field there's a man working. Hammer and nails. Knock knock knock. From post to post he goes. Slowly repairing the fence that runs between the hedgerow and the railway line. Knock knock knock. And a rest. And a glance up, at the circling buzzard. No rush. It's hot. There's all the time in the world for this.
Sat, May 04, 2024
218 Sing dawn - the songbirds of Abney Park nature reserve
It is hard to believe this is North East London at dawn. And yet it is. 5am, last Wednesday. Day break, on the 1st of May. Misted air, barely a breeze. Verdantly breathable air, filtered and cleaned by the dense surrounding woodland. When at 8am the park gates are unlocked, the people will come to walk the winding paths. Bathe in the atmosphere created by the trees. And breathe the restorative, country clean air. This is what a nature reserve within a city does. It purifies the air, not just for the lungs but for the ears. Layers upon layers of veteran trees soften the city rumble whilst providing a myriad of roosting spots for the songbirds to sing. And as they sing, their mellifluous sounds echo and reflect off all the boughs, branches, and countless leaves, to form an aural brilliance that is wonderful to behold. But behold the brilliance we rarely do. Rarely can do. 5am is not when most of us are around or want to be around. And perhaps, for the sake of the birds and their own sense of freedom in the trees that are their home, that's not such a bad thing. 5am is, shall we all agree, their time of day. Their chance to be on their own amongst their own kind. Be themselves, and be in the world, in their own particular way. Capturing an hour of this world, as it happened, and on a day when the sky was relatively free of planes and the nearby roads relatively free of traffic and sirens, is what the Lento box was there to do. Here is that hour of time, heard from behind the gates of the newly restored chapel at the heart of Abney Park nature reserve. Our special thanks to Abney Park for allowing us to capture the dawn chorus from the chapel. We recorded this episode exactly three years after our last recording just before the major restoration project started in the chapel. Listen to the dawn chorus from inside the chapel in 2021, in episode 68 . And more episodes from around Abney Park here .
Mon, April 29, 2024
217 Upland woods in winter gales (part 2 - sleep safe)
In winter gales amongst moorland trees at night. Dark sky. Empty of everything, except for the invisible moving wind. A moor slopes steep up to the right. And half a mile of grassland slopes gently away down the valley, to the left. At the bottom, is a reservoir, hidden behind more trees. This grassy spot along a high gritstone wall, near an old iron gate, looks from the lane like any overgrown corner of a Peak District field. But it isn't. It isn't just any spot. It is a seat in an amphitheatre of specially arranged wind catching trees. Of course nobody actually set out to specially arrange these outcrops of trees like this so they'd create such a perfectly balanced and spatially panoramic scene in winter gales. They only catch the wind and turn its energy into deep and richly undulating sound because that's what trees do. But having left the Lento box in this spot to capture this long passage of time, it feels wonderful to have discovered that this exists. Here it is. And the performance? An hour of fresh moorland air.
Mon, April 22, 2024
216 Sat on the sand of East Looe beach
You're not alone here, in this seaside town. A place of hot pasties, hot cups of tea, and families on a day out. A place of rolling Atlantic waves. This is East Looe on the coast of Cornwall. Thick grey sky. April cold. A sprinkling of rain, But shut your eyes, and it could be summer. Find a good spot on the sand. You may need to move once or twice. Be guided by your ears. Then chuck your rucksack down, lean against it with your umbrella angled so its just behind, and you'll have the perfect spot for an uninterrupted cinematic sound-view of the crashing waves. In all their crisp textural detail. And spatial glory. Can you hear which way the longshore drift goes? Maybe not yet. It can take a few minutes. While you wait notice how there's an interesting mix of garden birds and sea birds here. A mistle thrush far left, or is it a blackbird? A wren too, far right. Beyond where the little children are playing. The waves feel powerful in this spot on the sand. Powerful, Sometimes thunderous. Coming, and going, in long swaying rhythms. Coming, and going, with wide spacious calm inbetween.
Sun, April 14, 2024
215 Calm within Kilminorth Woods
A fresh Cornish spring day last week, along the West Looe River valley. Hear an area of ancient woodland. Described as the lungs of Looe. It's Cornish rainforest. Trees, that go back in time, farther than we can imagine. Walk inland, with the river to your right. Soon it'll be endless oaks, trunks covered with moss, all around you. As far as the eye can see. Ahead, where the muddy footpath goes. And behind, from where you've come. From left high up the steep sided valley. All the way down to touch the clean span of tidal water, that glints peacefully between the line of smaller trees. From high in the treetops above your head, the calls of rooks echo for half a mile or more. Birds sing crisp, and less harshly in these parts. They have no human noise to compete with. You can hear woodland birds, estuary birds, and sea birds all together here. Against a backdrop of beautiful, deep brown, undulating noise. Oak forest noise. The subtle harmonious sound that steady sea air makes when it moves over oak does seem to us to have a deep and richly brown sound-feel. It's a sound that's so spatial. So invigorating to the senses. We believe it is one of the most valuable and important sensory ingredients, of what some call a forest bathing experience. We loved every moment of it, and of being within the true precious quiet of Kilminorth Woods.
Mon, April 08, 2024
214 Storm over hotel peninsula
A birds ear view over Plymouth in the far south west of England. Plymouth in a fast gusting storm. Storm Kathleen. This is how it sounded from behind the huge plate glass window of a comfortable cushioned room on the fourth floor of a hotel the night before last. The hotel overlooks a district called The Hoe, where one of the original Eddystone Lighthouses now stands. We climbed Seaton's Tower just before making this recording. Inside the narrow corkscrew stairways, the rounded structure was rumbling loudly, like being inside a giant organ pipe. A few hours later, the wind was still fierce. Taken with the microphones on a tripod facing out a few inches away from the rain stippled glass (not at all how a sound recording is conventionally made) the air pressure was pressing so hard that whispering gusts were whistling and almost singing through the window seals, left and right. Somehow, though captured entirely from within the hotel room, the soundscape is wide and open. A blended scape, formed both from the interior cushioned acoustic of the hotel room and the wide open windswept city beyond. Far right of scene, cars can be heard passing along a rain soaked road. Left of scene air whistles through the window seal. The calls of seagulls light up the spacious sky, flying despite the extreme conditions. The building rumbles subsonically. The sound of Plymouth, an exposed coastal city, in Storm Kathleen. It's a sound photograph that without the protection of the window, would not have been possible to make.
Fri, March 29, 2024
213 Sound-scenes we love from four years of Lento
Today marks four years of Radio Lento! We launched on 29 March 2020. Since then, a hundred and forty hours of material shared. Hundreds of thousands of ad-free and cost-free downloads. Long-form audio recordings. Of natural and empty places. In high precision spacious sound. Real aural essences of what it is to be present and immersed in a real place. We've not missed a week since March 2020. Rural and country places. Coastal and tidal places. Edgelands. Brutal landscapes. Sonorous interior spaces. In wind and rain. Under the forces of nature. Broad daylight and the dead of night. We're interested not in any particular thing, but in the sound of every thing. In soundscapes that are most often not experienced. Because they seem empty. Places where nothing seems to be happening. Places filled with the delicate and the subtle. The soft, and the fragile. Aural environments that only through focusing over time, form in the mind's eye of the listener. Four years of producing Lento and we do still struggle to explain to people what Lento is. Is it mindfulness? Well, it could be, but we aren't really thinking of that when we make the recordings. Is it nature? Not specifically. Is it an experimental podcast? We are definitely not experimenting. Perhaps the ordinary, the everyday, the subtle, the long-form, is just too off the beaten track. We add that Lento is slow growing, but that we do get quite a lot of good feedback. They often say why don't you do a marketing plan? We say we can't really make one because the value of the material is in the the listeners heads not ours. They say you could combine it with someone doing guided meditation. We explain that any talking at all would ruin Lento. And they ask how do people know how to listen to it? And we say they just have to work it out for themselves. And they don't say anything. And we stare at each other. And after a few moments of thought they say your pod sounds amazing. And we ask if they have listened to it? And they say they will. And we explain it's harder than it seems to capture real authentic quiet, properly, because the places we can get to are almost always scattered with human made noise but when we do practice patience, quiet does eventually come, and that really makes each recording. And they seem to be thinking about it, but not know what to say next. And then we talk about something else. And we hope they might try listening, in a quiet place of course, with a pair of headphones or ear pods, so they can hear the captured quiet properly. In this special edition to mark four years we retrace our steps through six 10 minute segments from these episodes: 17 Dusk in the Forest of Dean 26 Delicate sifting waves at Felixstowe Ferry 139 A passing storm from the attic of an old house 128 Persistent rain at night in an urban garden 192 Spring wildlife on the Hoo Peninsula, Kent 136 Ocean breakers near St Abbs on the east coast of Sc
Sun, March 24, 2024
212 Ear witness: innercity woodland peace
In late December 2020 we were given permission to make a long form landscape recording of Abney Park nature reserve in north east London. Abney Park is an area of long established woodland, surrounded by busy streets and major roads carrying traffic in and out of central London. It's an oasis of tranquility used by locals to escape from urban living, that very convincingly does look like deep rural woodland. Muddy paths between tall trees, with the advantage if you take the right routes, to never see the city beyond. To the ear though, the city is usually very much there and present. All around. And from above. Planes heading to London's airports pass almost directly overhead, often separated by only a minute or so. Sirens circling. Helicopters hovering too. Wondering along the muddy paths and admiring the specimen trees can require some considerable zoning out of the aural experience, depending on the action of the day and weather conditions. What we've found though, by going back through our archive, is this recording. It is one we made on Christmas Day, in between lockdowns and when air travel was substantially reduced. The sounds of the city are of course still present, but greatly softened. The wind can be heard murmurating through the trees. The birds form the primary sound sources. Their crisp songs echo, and reverberate through the empty woodland. It's a unique soundscape, that is unlikely to happen again. You can of course still witness periods of tranquility within Abney Park. We do every time we go. And there are times in this recording when the presence of human activity approaches that which is normal now. What is we think different, and demonstrated in this piece of captured quiet, is just how long the peace lasts. And just how delicate the wide panoramic sound of the city rumble is, compared to today. We'd like to think this recording might serve as a benchmark for future city designers. and for everyone to listen to, as an example of what north east London can, and did sound like, with human made noise re-balanced with the natural world.
Sun, March 17, 2024
211 Nothe Fort at night - quiet swirling waves
Nothe Fort in Weymouth, on the Dorset coast. An old sea fort that celebrated its 150th birthday in 2022. For most of these years, it has been able to stand, looking out to the sea around Portland, amidst pristine clear night silence. Against the velvety quiet, tidal water ebbs and flows, rises and falls, swells and recedes, softly, around semi-submerged rocks. It's water that has a slow motion, sleepy sound. It's a soundscape that will have been heard by many a night watchman. And perhaps also the odd soul, curious enough to be awake at this time. But did the sea sound the same here 150 years ago as it does now? It isn't possible to say. We can't ask the people who knew. The sea, the rocks, the currents do change over long spans of time. So perhaps they did hear something slightly different, back then. Or maybe not. What we can hear in this recording, that we made by leaving the Lento box overnight in a tree beside Nothe Fort, capturing and witnessing the night hours, is from April 2023. We hope to get back to Nothe Fort before too long, to explore the museum again, and make another overnight recording that future generations will be able to listen to, and compare, with how it sounds to them, in 150 years time.
Sun, March 10, 2024
210 Watery dell amidst trees at night (sleep safe)
Everything sounds different in the night. Close things sound sharper. More precise. That which is farther away, sounds larger, though it is still farther away. The sound image of the night, is curiously paradoxical. And yet in an evolutionary way, it is the night context where our hearing may have fundamentally developed to fulfill its primary role. Here we're back for a second time, amidst the upland trees that surround this hidden dell, to take in this captured quiet from the night. To really listen to the sense of atmosphere that exists when nobody is about. The rilling water, however subtle and unnoticeable during the day, fills the scene. Amplified by the heightened reflectivity of the leaves above. It's about two o'clock in the morning. Almost all the sheep on the surrounding pastures are silent. Floating, like tiny clouds, just above the pitch dark ground. From time to time, the sky opens up with the sound of a passing plane. Nocturnal flights that for us make this place edgeland. The effect is to light up the full width of the landscape. Reveal, temporarily the vastness of the land. Its plunging contours. Its luscious fields. Its gritstone walls. Ancient barns. Sleeping farmhouses. All at rest, under an empty, windless sky. For a daytime listen from this place, go to episode 207 .
Sun, March 03, 2024
209 Downstream of the old mill
Here, take a seat on the bank. There's nobody about. Just you and the stream. And the birds of course. Cast your eyes around. Take it all in, before you get comfortable. Steep meadows all about, sloping down into this water meadow. With just you in it and a hazel tree, laden with catkins. No wonder this water's running so fast. There's been so much rain. In one month, more than anyone can remember. Met Office says its a record. You can tell it's got pace because the surface over the larger boulders has a look like blown glass. It looks sculptural. And sounds sculptural too. Melodic, rather than white noise. With neat crisp, edges, as the outer surface of the water briskly curls and surges over the unevenness of the rocky stream bed. It's truly mesmerising, if you let yourself properly listen. The woodland birds are singing across this valley in full spring song now. The one that sounds rich like a blackbird, repeating a phrase three or four times over, is a song thrush. Quite a few have made their home here in this secluded valley over the last couple of years. Something about them. Their clear, tuneful song. Their confidence in repetition, that brings an enchanted form of happiness. Happiness to be alive. Alive in this peaceful valley. Listening, to the rilling water as it flows through the water meadow. * We are continuing to explore this valley in the Derbyshire hills from many different angles and locations. This recording is one segment from a twelve hour overnight capture we made a couple of weeks ago, from a new location. A few hundred yards upstream of the water meadow is an old mill. It's lain empty and as far as we know disused for longer than the thirty years we've been exploring the area. Being able to hear this stream, and the water that only a few minutes earlier had flown past that old deserted mill, somehow feels good. We hope you feel the same. And enjoy the photos too, taken as we collected the kit, in the fresh late morning light. * Thanks for listening to Radio Lento. We'll be celebrating our 4th birthday in a few week's time. If you'd like to support us , you can do it here.
Sun, February 25, 2024
208 Lone tree under windswept telegraph wires
You can imagine them. The telegraph poles. The long line of them that stand along the Creel Path, on the east coast of Scotland. The thousand year old, empty Creel Path, that provides an ancient way between Coldingham and St Abbs. Imagine them now it's night. The deserted path. Jutting up into the deep dark sky. Charcoal black. Standing firm against the wind. Holding the mile long cable from Coldingham to St Abbs. Standing. And feeling the cable's weight. Feeling in the wind, its low, moaning vibrations. The tree, weather stunted and probably overlooked by almost all who stumble by on the rough stone track, holds and shelters the Lento microphones. Keeps them safe, as they listen out across the wild meadow before the sea. Waves, and ruffles its leaves, in the rising gusts of sea air. Waves, and braces, when it gets too strong. Braces, and relaxes again, as the air settles and stills. When the air is still, the presence of the sea can clearly be heard. Mid-left of scene. A wild sea, with waves crashing against the rocky cliffs of St Abbs. Seagulls can be heard too. Calling to each other. Their cries light up the spacious night sky. Sheep too, sometimes. And distantly, a marine vessel. Passing as a soft, gentle hum. * Listen with headphones or ear pods to experience the full binaural width and depth of this often quite subtle sound photograph. Listen through time to gain a fuller picture of the aural landscape. Other Lento recordings captured on the Creel Path are episode 131 and episode 146 .
Sun, February 18, 2024
207 Bucolic dell in upland meadows (subtle, slow, best with headphones)
Steep grassy meadows. Grazing sheep. Overgrown hedgerows. Thickets. Narrow stony streams, sometimes with sandy banks. Grit stone walls, with tumbled stones where weather and animals have made a way through. Thistles. Clumps of dense nettles. Patches of tall, well established woodland. A muddy farm beyond. And another behind. And hours, if you want, if you allow yourself, to lean elbows upon damp timbered gates, Put aside what's to do, and focus every part of your conscious mind on taking the landscape in. Here, in the presence of trees, nestled half way up a Derbyshire moorland by a babbling stream, is a good place to practice taking in the landscape. Where the non-human and the human worlds blend. It may look and often sound bucolic. but this is not in a strict sense wilderness. It's an edgeland. Farm machinery, A-roads, the flight paths to Manchester's ringway airport, though quite feint, are in range of hearing. But not distractingly so. Far off. Worlds, in a kind of pleasantly acceptable balance. This hour, is daytime. A bright morning in August. Clean. Sharp. In a country sort of way. Looking out onto the steep meadow in front, with sheep grazing, and under these tall well established trees, each fresh eddy of the clean flowing stream, reflects off the broad leaves above. Reflects, as soft shifting shadows do. And creates a sense of intimate, tree shaped, space.
Sun, February 11, 2024
206 Dawn birdsong in the leafy ravine
Meteorological spring is approaching. Mornings are getting lighter. Song birds have found their voices and although it's still early in the mating season, they're already decorating the hour around daybreak with mellifluous sound. In a few short months, it will peak. Fast-forward to a June day. Far below the microphones, moorland water flows in a white noise sheen along the bottom of the precipitously steep wooded valley. Up here, tied to the stout trunk of a tree, growing out of the 45 degree slope, everything within the valley is audible. Every bird. From every tree. Singing, out across the empty space. Audible, spatial, and richly resonating. And almost completely free of anything made by people. * In celebration of the beauty song birds give to the soundtrack of our outdoor lives, from now until the end of June, we're sharing this after daybreak segment of an overnight recording we made in June 2021, in a steeply wooded ravine above Todbrook reservoir, on the Cheshire-Derbyshire border. The time was around 5am. We're hoping to travel back to this exact location soon to re-capture this same magical soundscene. Want more? Listen to episode 89 and episode 160 from this same overnight recording.
Mon, February 05, 2024
205 Soundscenes of a changing tide (sleep safe)
Slide 1: Its the middle of the night. The Lento box is recording alone, tied to a cold, stark railing, that descends down the seawall into the water. Its an ear-witness to the nocturnal sound of this estuary place. East of Burnham-on-Crouch, facing due south, across the river, to Wallasea Island on the other side. There's a bare wind, and the tide is out. Out, but on the turn. On the turn, and rising. Slide 2: An hour later. Still the bare wind buffeting. The water's come up fast. Is within fifteen yards of the box. Estuary birds pass at distance. Halyards of nearby yachts tink, as they sway on their moorings. All there. All subtle. Slide 3: Two hours later. The water's still rising. Up and up the seawall. Now up the steepest stretch. Within a few yards of the box. Waves. Heard at close quarters. Heard bobbling, over the many ridged joins that make up the seawall. Slide 4: Another hour. And no more rising. This is the high tide. Water within an arms length of the microphone box. The wind has softened. The waves are full of themselves. Full, and falling over each other. Slide 5: Half an hour more. This high water seems always to have been. But the waves have changed. Changed into wavelets. Now chopping at the boundary of the seawall. Chopping and moving from right to left. To the left is west. It indicates the tide has turned. Mid-stream the water will be bobbly. Bouncy water that water people know means everything is not about to change, but has changed already. Slide 6: Just ten minutes later and this world is a very different place. Different because beyond all the chopping and bobbling wavelets, is a vast body of water that has, in its entirity, changed direction. It's silently moving not from left to right of scene, but from right back to left. Slide 7: The water, receding. The high tide, passed. Wavelets, shrunk, to the size of fingertips. Rippling fingertips, playing along the ridged surface of the seawall. And fine, tiny, sharp sounds too. Of vegetation. Popping and drying in this new air. What's opened up again is the wide soundscape of this place. this panoramic tidal place. So vast and empty. Under an ink black sky. With the warm glow of a ship's engine. Docked, far right of scene, at the terminal in Burnham-on-Crouch. Sometimes heard to the keen ear, at this distance only ever fleetingly, are the night patrolling curlews. * We made this recording several years ago in August. A night when heavy rain and squally weather fronts were moving inland from the North Sea. This audio has waited on a hard drive to have its day. We hope you enjoy listening to these scenes of the changing tide. The scenes are taken from a four hour segment which are presented in sequence, to portray the dramatic changes in the soundscape heard from the same point on the seawall.
Sun, January 28, 2024
204 Rain falls on steep craggy woodland (sleep safe)
Fresh rain. Fresh woodland rain, from Miller's Dale in Derbyshire. From a hedgehog's perspective. Low on the forest floor, amidst the leaf litter, and the tangled ivy. A hidden hedgehog's place where only raindrops that have missed every leaf, twig and branch above, lands. In total darkness the night before, we'd tied the Lento box to the broad base of a tree to capture the sound-scene of this place. On the very edge of a precipitous ravine. Far below, beyond a procession of trees whose vertical trunks grew up from ground too steep to climb, rilled the River Wye. It shined through the night as a vail of clean, wide white noise, and rose up as an aural mist, from the shallow fast rushing water below. As the new day began to dawn, the Lento box listened alone. Faithfully capturing the aural experience of the falling rain, a hedgehog roused its prickly self around the foot of the tree. Time passes. Fresh banks of rain come, and go. Distant birds call from the high tree tops. Wood pigeons coo, from their sheltered perches. It's a world of tall leafy trees, and falling water. And flowing water. And steep sided valleys. And plunging green meadows. And craggy, exposed rock formations. * Nearby this wooded location, with lofty views over Miller's Dale, is Ravenstor YHA. A gloriously echoey retreat, whose grand columned entrance also shows the building's austere past. Now it welcomes the gladly fatigued, bearing rucksacks on worn shoulders, with an appetite for a bunk bed slumber, preceded by a hearty self-cooked meal prepared in a friendly communal kitchen. This is where we stayed overnight while both Lento boxes recorded. Hear what the other box captured on episode 184 .
Sun, January 21, 2024
203 Dartmoor stream above waterfall gorge (part 2)
Below a stone circle high on Dartmoor called the Nine Maidens, there's a stream. It threads its way down through steep sloping pastures. In the distance, just a fine, silvery, crooked line. It enters an area of dense forest. Becomes enmeshed with the sound signatures of tall, reflective, overhanging trees. Of sparse woodland birds. And disappears over a waterfall, into a deep wooded gorge. There's a little wooden footbridge, above the waterfall. Here we left the Lento box alone to capture the scene, upstream of the bridge. Upstream of the waterfall. Tied to an interesting tree. Such swift, exquisite water, spatially twinkling, over shallow rounded rocks. We felt mesmerised by the way the rushing water made us feel, flowing so close, from left to right. The stream produced a gravity, of its own, that made this tiny corner of the world, the three or so yards between the tree and the water's edge, seem like a whole world in itself. * This is part 2 of the long exposure we took of this scene, back in summer 2022. You can hear part 1 in episode 130 . With time and headphones the exquisitely rich mesmerising detail of the spatially flowing water is revealed.
Sun, January 14, 2024
202 Upland woods in winter gales (breathe easy and *sleep safe*)
There are spacious places in the world, where outcrops of woodland can be heard singing together in strong winter gales. Upland places. Uninhabited places. Naturally exposed, where the upper reaches of the land meet with the sky. Singing, to trees, does not involve what we have as vocal chords, or hitting the right note, or picking the right moment to come in. The wind is the conductor. The choir are the trees. The voices are the trunks, branches, twigs, and leaves. Basses. Tenors. Altos. Sopranos. The physical form of each tree is complex and varied, in thickness, texture, shape, and give. The more slender the form, such as a twig, the more it gives. Each shapes the flow of the wind, in particular ways. Each creates vectors. Lattice patterned chords, invisible, made of nothing but turbulent, vibrating air. Take just one tree. One form, that sings with ten thousand different voices. In a wide open landscape, where three audibly separate outcrops of trees can be heard all at once, all catching and turning the wind into sound, a sense of three dimensional space can be heard, and felt. Heard, as vast banks of air move over wide expanses of ground. Felt, as deep dark rumbles. As rich brown surges. As delicate, detailed whisping textures. Rising. Falling. Rising. Blending, from one aural shape, into another. * We made this recording at the end of December, leaving the Lento box alone and overnight, whilst up in the Peak District. We're really happy the Lento box was able to capture this sound scene so perfectly in the strong winds.
Sun, January 07, 2024
201 Out on Cooden Beach at night (part 2 - night breakers on shingle) *sleep safe*
The night we captured this soundscene of Cooden Beach in East Sussex, there was a brisk onshore breeze blowing in from the west. West is to the right of scene, where the incoming waves can sometimes be heard making first landfall. It's February. It's coming up to 11pm. The sky is a deep dark velvet, and the clean sea air, is hovering around 6 degrees centigrade. Nobody is about. Centre of scene is due south. The open sea. Behind, the whole of England. Just over a mile and a half to the west is Normans Bay. Two miles to the east is Bexhill. It's a coastline defined by shingle. Vast sloping fields of clean rounded stones, stretching from horizon to horizon. On such an overcast night as this. Moonless. The landscape can no longer be defined by its horizon. To our sense of spatial hearing, and being within thirty yards of the crashing waves, the world is transformed into a wide textured canvas. Heavy greys and shadowed browns across the lower half. Brighter, crisper, scattering greys, just above the mid-line. Every breaker there, as it makes landfall. And there, as its form collapses into spray. Still there, as it rattles and hauls the loose shingle back with it. There, and there again, always in different places. From left to right. Endlessly overlapping. Endlessly renewing. Night breakers, on a shingle beach. * This is the latter half of a one hour recording we captured on Cooden Beach last February. Hear the first section in episode 155 . In 2021 we captured the shingle of Normans Bay in episode 63 and the essence of Bexhill in episode 66 .
Sun, December 31, 2023
200 Windswept night in the belfry of Rye Church
Three o'clock has struck. Up steep ladders, on the top platform of the belfry inside Rye Church, the ancient clock counts through this small night hour. Its regular sound blends with long and undulating gusts of fresh sea air. Air that's travelled, over miles of sand, shingle and marshland, from out on the open sea. An ever changing pressure of moving air sighs between the shuttered rafters. Rattles the steel flagpole outside on the castellated parapet wall. Resonates down inside the tower to the ringing chamber below, as a soft, dark, velvety rumble. And though without any form, not least arms and hands, somehow lifts and knocks the dead weight of a loose slab of exposed stonework. When the wind slackens, am amazing thing happens. Not only does the presence of moving air seem to disappear from this aural view, but much of the structure of the belfry too. A kind of transparency comes about, and a panoramic image appears. Of the surrounding landscape beyond. Subtle. More like the presence that a hanging silk curtain creates than any nameable sound. Fabric like, and thin. but definitely there. And you know when you're hearing it because instead of the tower, you feel all that there is around you, are the panoramic murmurings of the land that is Rye and Romney Marsh. * Our grateful thanks again go to Revd Paul White of St Mary's church at Rye for enabling the Lento boxes to be left to capture the quiet inside.
Sun, December 24, 2023
199 Moorland forest mid winter gales
(Hello if you are new here! We're a different type of podcast. Here's a few tips about how to get the most out of listening to Radio Lento .) Twilight's coming. And a storm. To be half way up a lonely Peak District moor, off the puddled track, looking down, into a mixed plantation of tall murmuring trees. Scots pine and spruce. Tall, hushing conifers. Veteran stunted oak. And ancient holly bushes. Each tree catches the wind. Transposes its undulating energy into different, and distinctive shapes. Sound signatures. Between the trees, a paddock. And two sheep, grazing on wet winter grass. And their small wooden hut. For when it rains. Partly obscured. Partly filled with hay. Partly forgotten. But not by the robin. Or the song thrush. Or the watchful rooks. This forest knows a storm is coming. Like the sheep, busy with their grass, but patiently waiting. Like the robin red breast, busy too, defending his territory. Like the song thrush, perched up on a favoured branch. Though way up the moor, this place is not entirely out of touch. Planes do pass in that weatherless zone, high above the cloudbase. And Land Rovers do too, engines labouring, up steep lanes, distantly. But to the eye, there really is nothing, for miles. Just an open sky. And steep plunging fields. And green sodden ground, that in the summer months will spring into luscious meadow. And over the waterlogged ground, a trail of empty boot prints, that we left behind as we walked away. Away from the holly tree, and the microphone box that we carefully tied and angled, so it could be an ear witness of this forest, in winter gales, before the storm.
Sun, December 17, 2023
198 Fishing village harbour at night (part 3 - wide open peacefulness)
(Hello! We're a different type of podcast. Before you listen, here's a few tips about how to get the most out of listening to Radio Lento .) From here, steep up a winding path above the harbour, the ocean waves crash onto the ancient seawalls of St Abbs on the east coast of Scotland, in full spatial detail. Swirling currents of bouncing swell, softened by less than a hundred yards, into a rich textured white noise emulsion. Clean, simple, washing waves. Nocturnal seagulls in dark night air. Come and go. Circle and call. Here here here, I am, says one. There there there, you are, says another. Here here here. There there there there, they cry. Lillting cries. Reflecting across the sky. High above the waves. Soon, from somewhere out along the jetty, a dark shadow begins to hum. Begins to send warm vibrations out into the empty ocean air. A marine engine, started. Thrumms harmonious, like two organ pipes. A muffled thud here. A muffled thud there. Echoes of those at work, preparing the vessel to sail. Hauling heavy oiled ropes off squat steel capstans. Needing to be coiled. Needing to be stowed. What are we to make of this quiet and empty place? Is it here to be explored, or is it here just to be heard? Heard, just as it is. And just as it was, on that still August night. Under that perfect quiet sky. One boat. One sea. One, fishing harbour at night. Remote, on the east coast of Scotland.
Sun, December 10, 2023
197 December rain light to moderate (sleep safe)
The rain came down, in the early hours of this morning, as I write. Lovely rain. Light to moderate. Temperature 7. Dew point 4. Wind EastNorthEast, gusting 8 knots. Enough to drift the ice cold raindrops. And ruffle the leading edge of the wide tarpaulin, that we've stretched over our back yard for shelter. And to make the rain sound better. More detailed. More spatial. Nobody was there though. To witness. To feel the emptiness of the night, or hear how the rain drops fell. Nobody apart from a couple of distant birds. Night birds, that we've noticed on many nocturnal winter recordings do seem to sing. Dreamily, at this time of year. As the solstice approaches. Now. With headphones on. With time set aside, we can be witnesses to how time passed in this place. Invisible witnesses, physically sitting, here, but mentally conscious of being there. Alive and aware of being present in the captured quiet of somewhere else. an empty and uncluttered place, where the winter rain fell. * this quiet was captured at 4am on Saturday 9th December 2023, in north east London. We pointed the Lento box out over a long line of little back gardens. It's an area that hums like a city, but that also murmurs, especially at night, under the influence of the ever changing weather, and the wide open sky.
Sat, December 02, 2023
196 Estuary bleak passing ship
Warm inside an all-weather coat. Facing out across the water. Sat, boots wedged against the top ridge of the slanted seawall. There's rain in the air. Thirty minutes to take in this wild estuary place, you tell yourself. Right of scene the small Essex town of Burnham-on-Crouch. Directly ahead across the water Wallasea Island. Low lying. A vegetated slip of green land and an RSPB nature reserve. Left of scene wild swirling water stretches seven miles to the North Sea. Sit tight, here on the seawall. This is empty time, to listen to the landscape. Wind from the east flattens the inflowing tide. Presses down the surface into shallow shifting wavelets. Translucent wavelets, that wash briskly along the concrete footings of the seawall. As time passes, and so very slowly, a warm hum slides into view. Harmonious. Reassuring. It's a ship. A ship approaching. Gradually, it draws level. Gradually, it crosses your line of view. Then, with clear water ahead it increases power. On a heading out to sea. This landscape is sparse. Beautiful. Bleak. Ektachrome bleak. * This is the very last segment of an amazing overnight recording the Lento box captured several years ago from the seawall just east of Burnham-on-Crouch. When we came back to collect the box it was waterlogged and we feared the whole recording was lost. Somehow it survived which makes all the episodes captured from this incredibly exposed location extra special. Listen to all the other segments in episodes 86, 90, 96, 111 and 126 - all listed in our post on episodes from Dengie .
Sun, November 26, 2023
195 Tranquility found on England’s highest railway station
Dent station lies on the historic Settle to Carlisle railway between Blea Moor Tunnel and Rise Hill Tunnel. It's the highest operational railway station on the National Rail network in England. The highest and we feel the best because it is so extremely wide open. So extremely exposed. Set in the North Yorkshire Dales National Park, Dent station serves at 1,150 feet above sea level, in stalwart public service. Up here is real wilderness. Rugged upland wilderness. A place that's persistently buffeted by fresh, cuffing wind. Air, that like the trains, travel free and at speed over marathon spans of mostly uninhabited land. But there is a tree, by the old wooden gate that leads onto the station platform. The tree has grown squat. Leans from the prevailing wind. Has countless myriad leaves. Waxy well weathered leaves, that the Lento mics tied to its gnarled trunk captured rustling, and jostling, in the brisk undulating breeze. And beyond these spacious rustlings, grazing sheep can sometimes be heard. And high circling buzzards. And other little birds too, through time. You can if you want choose to stand beside this tree, whilst waiting for your train. Don't worry the platform is only just there. And beside the tree you can so witness what to an urban dweller is rare. A tranquil environment woven not from silence but from affirmative sound, that inside our minds spells peace. Mental peace. A wild landscape that flows in through your ears. How everything sways. Sways this way and that. Never against. Only with you. And the ever undulating wind. * We left the Lento mics alone on the tree outside the station gate last August. It was a cool and brisk summer day. The next train back to Settle was in an hour so we walked up the fell to see what we could find. We found a remote fir forest, which sounded so good we had to go back the next day to record it. You can go to this fir forest in episode 183 .
Sun, November 19, 2023
194 Inside a bird hide
The atmosphere inside a bird hide is quite unusual, as interior spaces go. Low wind moaning in the drooping wires between telegraph poles. Whispering rushes and siffing seed heads of marsh grasses. Indistinguishable shifting murmurings, of the surrounding landscape, blown in through low letterbox windows. To the ear there is a lot of outside to be heard inside a bird hide. A fleeting curlew. A humming propeller plane. A distant pair of passing footsteps on the gravel towpath. But there are other sounds from inside to feel too. Interior sounds. Flurried sounds, made by internal things under external forces. Rattling shutters. Knocking slats. Timber panels grumbling. All set moving by wayward gusts of estuary air. And inbetween. When outside has less to say. Perfect, hidden, tranquility. As you sit quietly, on the wooden bench. And peer out through the narrow viewing slots to see what you can see, face brushed by fresh gusts of air, maybe just for a moment you realise what a bird hide is. A building trying not to be a building. A place trying not to be a place. A shelter that wants to hide you, but not be in your way. Spoil your view. Of the low tide water. The wide exposed mud flats. The silent birds, picking light footedly over the mud.
Sun, November 12, 2023
193 Slow waves in the night quiet (sleep safe)
It's always strange when we leave the Lento box behind to record overnight. The feeling is strong, but also hard to pin down. The Lento box feels like a trusted friend, even a family member now. It has taken us years to build and refine, and lives on the shelf in our kitchen when its not out on a job which makes it more than just an object. It's travelled far and wide with us too, and made almost every episode published on Radio Lento. Will the box be there when we come back, is of course the one thought we've had to learn not to worry about, because otherwise Radio Lento and all the places that have been captured in panoramic binaural sound would not exist. As we walk away from the box, tied to a remote tree or sturdy post, we always stop, turn around and check for one last time whether things are right. Will it be safe where it is? Have we located and angled it to capture the best panoramic "sound photograph" as possible even though we can't know what is going to happen. Is the spot really the best we can find? These thoughts are often whispered, because being out in remote locations at night never does feel comfortable. The night we set up the Lento box in Weymouth to capture this episode ran very much the same as every other night record. The tree we found in a quiet secluded shoreline spot felt mysterious in the inky dark under a full moon. Like it somehow knew we were there. The sea, only yards away, also lapped knowingly against the jumbled rocks, and the air seemed unusually still. So still in fact we could hear even the tiniest details of the shifting waves. Climbing the tree so the panoramic width and sharp detail of the sound-view could best be captured wasn't as risky as it might seem in total darkness, but positioning the box on a tree that felt like it was aware of us did somewhat heighten our own sense of self. Of course we needn't have worried about any of this. After we left, the tree and the sea, weren't worried. They accepted the Lento box for what it was. A non-human aural witness. And so were content to carry on as they always have. For all of time. A tree just being a tree. The ocean waves just being ocean waves. Lapping with patience and grace, against the rocky shore. Such slow waves, alone, in the night quiet.
Sat, November 04, 2023
192 Remembering summer on the Hoo Peninsula
The experience of being out in the wide open on Higham Marshes in Kent on a warm May afternoon is nothing short of glorious. It's a perfect location for the Lento mics too. Earlier this year we walked through the nature reserve en-route to the old fort on the Thames and left the Lento box to capture the sound scene of the Higham Marshes nature reserve from a little hawthorn tree in full scented blossom. We shared part of this sound-view in episode 169 . Here's the other part of that same recording, kept back until now, for a time we really need to travel back. The Hoo Peninsula is today an edgeland and a place of environmental dichotomies. A vast area, where giant operating container ports rumble on the same horizon as silent half buried war relics of the past. Where fields of managed land abuts wild margins of natural unmanaged land. It's a world navigated via long winding and sometimes contradictory footpaths. Paths that one minute are rubbish strewn smelly boot thieving bogs exposed to the aural effluent of distant industry, and the next, grassy and dry under foot, tranquil, shielded from all human noise. Wandering ways, lined with verdant vegetation. Filled with exotic sounding birds. For some reason the body seems to adapt to this dichotomous terrain before the mind does. Though the contrasts are not as stark as they may seem when written down. In fact it's these edgeland contradictions that really make the Hoo Peninsula, particularly the area between the old fort and Higham Marshes, so sensorially fascinating. Of course eventually the mind does catch up with the body. And the feelings are good. Of sensory bathing. Bathing in meadow scents. In exotic bird calls. In happily humming insects foraging from plant to plant. In the timeless sound of baaing sheep and grazing cattle tearing up fresh meadow grass beside lapwings, cetti's warblers, skylarks, geese, ducks and red shank. The sheer density and diversity of creatures audible from this little tree hidden on the marsh, is really something to behold. And the way they exist between the human made anthropogenic noise, is something to behold too.
Sat, October 28, 2023
191 Moorland waterfall (sleep safe natural white noise)
An hour of pure falling water in a natural wide open landscape. Captured in the early hours of yesterday morning in the hills of Derbyshire. A place off the beaten track. Up in the hills. Rugged. Reached by a steep up climb holding for balance on arm-thick sapling trunks, whilst stepping between winding deer tracks. An old holly tree stands amongst many other trees, facing the waterfall. We hang the Lento mics off one of its outstretched limbs. Angle them out so they can hear across and beyond the waterfall. A profusion of hard ferns growing up from the rocky pool softens the intensity. Down stream hart's-tongue ferns line the banks, and rustyback ferns cover time-toppled dry stone walls. This unmanaged upland environment is filled with vegetation and clean refreshing sound. When embarking on a long listen like this, the sound view may at first seem, well, just white noise. Pure white water noise. Not much else. But time does something. The auditory brain gradually tunes in. To tune in, headphones are needed as they are designed specifically to project binaural sound directly onto the left and right eardrums (with no room-gap). The left and right inner ear then carries the soundwaves layered with complex spatial cues (here the waterfall and surrounding environment) into the auditory brain where a mental picture is formed. These soundwaves, having been authentically captured using ear-like microphones at a real location, can trigger a similar aural and perhaps even physical response to the experience of actually being there yourself. It's why we say "surround yourself with somewhere else". This sound-view is of the waterfall, to the left. Partly hidden behind trees and beds of hard ferns. The stream flows in front of you left to right down the moor, to the valley that opens out to the far right. Ahead and below the holly tree holding the mics is the drop pool where water faintly gloops and gurgles. And sometimes very tiny clicks can be heard from left and from right. Probably the branches of the trees 'resting' down as they do in the cool night hours. This process where the boughs of a tree rest down by around fifteen degrees makes subtle noises, and is when dead wood most often drops down into the leaf litter. The auditory brain is our constant 360 degree survival sense that's evolved over a million years giving us a powerful non-light dependent way to alternatively 'see' the world around us. Spatial hearing has evolved in tandem with sight and our brains construct our perceived reality from both senses together when out in the natural world. Even though modern ways of thinking are heavily anchored to sight, by investing just a little quality time in natural binaural listening you can tell it taps into something subliminal and evolutionary. A calm threat-free natural environment like this one beside a remote waterfall, just does feel good. There's no need to wait for scientists to tell us why.
Sat, October 21, 2023
190 St Mary’s Church in Rye
We're hugely grateful to Revd Paul White of St Mary's church at Rye for enabling this special recording to be made. An aural presence of St Mary's church. Captured through the night of the 3rd of October. This passage of time is as it happened, from midnight to 1am. Experience being in the nave, then perched high in the belfry looking down from the top ledge upon the bells, including the 'quarter boys' that strike the quarters. There's a wonderful old timber beam to rest against, so don't worry about the drop. This sound-scene of St Mary's unfurls over an hour and between two slow alternating perspectives, each lasting about six minutes. It starts in the nave where the congregation gather for services and prayer. Then glides up to the belfry. Due to the extreme intensity of sound in the belfry (the sound of the main bell carries for miles) the sound scene during striking is from the perspective of the nave. On the very last strike, the perspective blends back up into the belfry, letting you witness the singing of the main bell as it fades away. (Note The clapper can be heard knocking slightly against the bell, as it settles back to rest after striking one.) The church's clock marks each second passing with a crisp resonant clunk, as it has done for many centuries. Indeed it is one of the oldest church turret clocks in working order, first installed in 1561-2. The pendulum visible above the nave was added later. (Read more about St Mary's fascinating history .) The belfry is at the top of the church tower, and is a narrow space very much exposed to the elements. The clock's mechanism can be clearly heard from up here, together with the pressure of moving air as it presses through old rafters, and rocks heavy roof panels. To the right the flagpole outside vibrates against its sturdy mooring. The melodious strike of the quarter boys is close and clearly defined from up here inside the belfry. In contrast the nave is a large spacious and sonically reflective space. High ceilings and wide stone floors. It's where the congregation gather for service. From here the main body of the church can be heard, shouldering the weather in soft, hushing reverberances. A peaceful place, for people, time and prayer. Please note that this is NOT a sleep safe episode due to the bell chimes and clock mechanism. It is a rare chance to hear such an ancient space at night with the sound of the clock inside and the wind raging outside.
Sat, October 14, 2023
189 Night rain falls on a drystone wall (quiet and sleep safe)
There, thought the old drystone wall. I knew it. A tawny owl. Flying silent, up top the field. It'll only be a shadow, if ever you do get to see it. Better get to where you're going my feathered friend. The rain's coming. Not long, I'd give it, what, five minutes before the first shower. A flurry. That's all. At least to start with. Night minutes mind. No! Night minutes aren't slower if that's what you're thinking. Nothing like that. No they're just, different. They don't run in a day-straight line. Night minutes spiral. Like the way currents on a slack stretch of river move. You know, in slow drifting circles. Sends your mind round in circles too if you let them. They pass alright despite them going round in circles. Not sure how that works, it just does. All you have to do, to go along with them, is concentrate. Not concentrate on counting them. You do it by listening. All around wide about listening. Listening, without expecting or waiting for anything particular to happen. Do it by keeping your mind free of expectations and instead let whatever the world has for you, come to you, just when it does. Now call me an old drystone wall, which is what I am, but even I know half the problem these days is that when you set your mind on something you want to happen, you miss the simple pleasures the world has for you while you're waiting. No, it's not patience I'm meaning here. Why be patient. I'm not and I've stood sturdy here for centuries. It's diligence. An active process, of careful, and persistent listening to what is there. In the place you want to be. * This sound view was recorded from the top of a drystone wall overlooking fields of nocturnal sheep, in the North Yorkshire market town of Settle last August. Rain comes and goes. It's a very ordinary field in many ways, and not far from a very ordinary sounding B road with some occasional night traffic on it. Combined with the odd soft arching plane, the sound view exudes a pleasantly harmonius aural fabric that is soporific and sleep safe.
Sat, October 07, 2023
188 Rock seat on Rye Harbour beach
Near a limpet covered wall, beaten into shape by high tide waves and squally weather, are some rocks submerged in shingle. Rye Harbour shingle. Sun warmed, they've got just enough flat on top, for two to sit. And enough yards from the water too. For you not to get wet. And yet, from time to time, you do. But only a speck, thrown by an exuberant wave. Advancing waves keep rolling in. Splashing and breaking, as much onto each other as they do onto the smart grey contoured shingle. Splashing and breaking waves whose sound is as bright as the light of the midday sun. From your smooth rock seat, you can hear the tide's not far now, from the turn. A tiny bead's landed upon the back of your knee-rested hand. One speck of cool ocean. You dab it away. Its translucent shadow feels like a winter penny in the brisk sea breeze. * We made this recording a few days ago on a warm October day at Rye Harbour beach in East Sussex. The sun was crisp and strong, as was the onshore breeze. One of the most wonderful feelings is scrunching over the different bands of shingle, as you head down to the shore, because of how the sound changes. ** Thank you to everyone who supports us on Ko-fi .
Sat, September 30, 2023
187 Steam train stops at country station
You strode up to this field, through lush meadow, for a better view over Arley station. And now you're here. It's a perfect Shropshire August day. Blue sky. Light breezes. Hot sun on your back. Nearly time you think looking up into the sky, far right, for any sign of smoke. The whole station's in view from up here. Here beneath the tall whispering trees, and basking grass crickets. There's the empty waiting tracks, lined by high overgrown hedgerows. And a man down there. Hammer. Nails. Fence beside the gravelled track, being sporadically mended. Such a country scene. With such balmy country sounds. Benevolent. Timeless. There, watched by the circling buzzard. Chased away by rooks. And when it first came from over the horizon, it announced its imminent arrival with a blast on the whistle. Mile wide, its sound waves travelled. Through the cutting it then proceeded. To emerge like a resplendent surprise from under the old stone bridge. A heavily rolling, clanking, iron mass of hissing pressure, that gently squealed to a halt in the waiting station. As it waited for its passengers to board, it pressed against its wood block brakes, radiating heat. And a slowly building, smouldering hiss. And the whole valley seemed to brace itself for what it knew was about to come. The bridge and the sloping fields. The trees. The road. The buildings and even the sky. All braced themselves, to be turned inside out. Turned into a steam train dream. A steam locomotive, to give it it's proper title, does not so much depart a station, as leave it in its wake. Its iron furnace contains such pressure, that when its valves expose its pistons to pump the girders that turn the giant wheels, it's not just the air that's kneaded like a dough, but the whole world around it. It's a palpable sense of power that so surpasses anything you can have imagined, that all you can do is grin. Whilst fixed to the spot. In enchanted admiration. * We took this sound photograph of a steam train passing through Arley station last month. We recorded in high definition sound. After the train left, we left the box recording alone, to take in the soft rural wind in the trees, the crickets in the grass, the man mending the trackside fence, and all the other sounds of ordinary everyday life going on in this Shropshire valley.
Sat, September 23, 2023
186 Slow forest Wyre valley
What happens, inside slow forest, is not much. Just the odd snap and crack, of a dry twig dropping, every now and then. I know sometimes there is a rook. And I know a raven too, if you've managed not to fall asleep. And echoes. Of passing people on the trail. And of seagulls and roosting wood pigeons too. Every now and then. No, not much happens, in slow forest. Apart from the wind in the trees. And the buzzing insects. And the distant farm. And the plaintive cries of what we might imagine is a lonely juvenile bird. But slow forest, is the place to go, if you want to hear a forest just being a forest. It's so huge. And so empty (not counting the trees) that most of what you hear is just, forest. Trees being trees. Leaves being leaves, in the changing wind. And the changing wind, just being a changing wind. * We captured this hour of forest time by leaving the Lento mics alone on an old tree last month deep in the Wyre Forest in Worcestershire. Two planes doing a loop-the-loop can be heard steeply descending around the middle section of the recording, and the echoing whistles of a passing steam train as it travels along the Severn Valley Railway can be heard towards the end.
Sat, September 16, 2023
185 Onshore breeze on Chesil beach (sleep safe and in hi-def sound)
This onshore breeze. A pleasant one, will not cuff too much against your ears. It'll flutter. Like a dark brown feather quivers, on a current of moving air. It'll be steady too. As a pleasant onshore breeze is. As the horizon is, from whence it came. Rising, at its centre. And falling away, almost imperceptibly either side of its farthest edges. A constant. And a consistent presence that lets your skin know just how endless the space is. Out there. A strange thing though. Worth noting. Worth remembering, for next time. How an onshore breeze is unchanging. While it comes from out there, from the wide open endless sea, and while it lands upon the shore just as the incoming waves do, it does no advancing or receding, like the waves do. No hauling back of the shingle. No pulling away making you feel your love is about to be lost only, seconds later, to be found again. No. Because with the onshore breeze, you always know where you are. It's constant. Cool yet convivial. Makes the time spent on the beach feel real. Right. Restorative. * We took this 30 minute sound photograph on Chesil Beach by Portland last April. Its the second take of the beach from a different location to episode 163 but taken shortly afterwards on the same day. Placing the Lento sound camera pointing directly out to sea, about fifteen yards from the breaking waves, the scene captures not only the steady on-shore breeze, but the deep visceral and spatial sound of the receding waves as they haul back huge quantities of the smooth, very heavy kind of shingle, that this section of Chesil Beach is made of.
Sat, September 09, 2023
184 River rilling through Miller’s Dale (sleep safe, hour-long)
Miller's Dale. Steep sided. A valley in the Derbyshire Dales with magnificent contours. High rocky outcrops. Sheer faced cliffs. Green fields plunging down to a quiet, winding river. It's a place where geologists go, to see the evidence of lava flows from millions of years ago. Where historians go, to marvel at Victorian viaducts and tunnels cut by hand in the 1800s. And where weekend people go to trek or cycle through open country along the disused railway lines that used to carry the trains between Manchester and London. Miller's Dale feels cut off from the world. Alive in the moment, but somehow separated. As you wonder its winding and overgrown footpaths, you sense the valley is a place not only of restorative solitude, but a place where you are free to imagine yourself conscious in another time. Another era. Hearing the echoes of a rumbling steam train, chuffing northwards with Victorian haste. The meek baas of sheep, grazing on wet Iron Age pastures. Or the tide of the bygone sea, that the composition of the rocks shows this landscape almost unimaginably used to be. Now the sound of water flowing is from the river. the River Wye. How steadily it runs, along the valley bottom. Open country water, that along the shallow stretches rills, pleasantly, over tumbled stones. Cool. Refreshing. Consistent. Rilling in watery melodies, if you let yourself listen for long enough. * We left the Lento mics alone, hanging from a steeply leaning tree, to capture the spatial sound of the River Wye flowing through the night. Some planes are audible in the sky, possibly more than usual for 2am, due to a major air traffic control breakdown the night before.
Sat, September 02, 2023
183 Upland fir forest (sleep safe and ideal for headphones)
High, in the remoteness of the Cumbrian hills above Dentdale, with buzzards circling overhead, we found a fir forest. Tall, elegant trees, reaching up to the sky. All leaning, slightly, against a mild August breeze. The mild, long distance, cross country breeze. The hill was steep, so we stopped to take in the view behind. It was then we heard the forest. Its dense trees loomed above us. Only twenty yards away. Giant sails, in moving air. Tall. Dense. Each tree hushing not in white noise, but in noise of other shades Light browns. Dark browns. Dry stone greys. Twilight greens. Dark purples. Each undulating. And dissolving into the other. Nearby, we found a path. It led into the forest. Led into its quiet heart. Surrounded by hushing trees, we listened. Stock still. In total silence. A remote fir forest. High, in the Cumbrian hills. * We left the Lento mics alone to capture the undulating sound within the heart of this forest. At 29 mins a freight train can be very distantly heard as it rolls through Dent railway station farther down the moor. Or the fell, as the locals say. From ten mins in a buzzard can be heard circling directly overhead. Dentdale is at the western end of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
Sat, August 26, 2023
182 Night scapes special - August intermission 4 (sleep safe)
For this last August intermission episode we've made you a montage of *sleep safe* sound-scenes selected from four overnight recordings. From the sea wall at Burnham-on-Crouch, looking out over panoramic tidal estuary waters by Wallasea Island. An oak tree deep within the Forest of Dean where woodcock make their roding flights. A remote fishing village harbour under empty skies in South East Scotland. To a rural wood in Suffolk where we made our first ever overnight recording. Here are some short descriptions plus links to the episodes so you can hear them in full. 126 The seawall and the night patrolling curlews To be a remote seawall, on a stretch of tidal estuary. To see the days and nights not as periods of time, but as slowly undulating waves. To feel the weight of water, twice rising, twice falling. To hear, the lone patrolling curlews. This is Burnham-on-Crouch around 4am, looking out across the tidal waters towards Wallasea Island 129 Pristine quiet to early dawn A clearing, deep within an expansive forest, where the night air carries so little sound that only the trickling stream can be heard. The stream's sound reflects narrowly off the trunk of the tree, like the flickering light of a campfire. But when a woodcock flies by, on its roding flight, the sense of space is temporarily revealed. This segment of overnight recording we made in the Forest of Dean. It begins at around 4am when the space around the oak tree holding the microphones is still pitch dark. 140 Fishing village harbour at night Real quiet from the middle of the night, captured from a point above the harbour of St Abbs on the East Coast of Scotland. Car-free. Plane-free. Just the sparse and spacious cries of circling gulls over harbour waves, and the faintest hum of a fishing vessel anchored somewhere out at sea. This remote, thousand-year-old fishing village is to us a place defined by its quiet horizons and empty, plane-less skies. 74 Night shallowing in a Suffolk Wood It's 3am in our first ever twelve hour overnight sound landscape recording. A Wood in Dedham Vale, Suffolk. Balmy August night. the Lento mics left alone to capture the sound landscape from deep within the uninhabited woodland. they revealed dark bush crickets, chirruping the passing of time. Wind moving soft
Sat, August 19, 2023
181 Woodland scapes special - August intermission 3
For this penultimate intermission episode, we've made you a montage of sound-scenes selected from four enchanting woodland episodes. A forest ravine high in the Derbyshire hills. Under a tree above the town of Wooler, in Northumberland. A waterfall gorge on Dartmoor. And finally, the mysterious murmurings from deep within the Forest of Dean. Here are the descriptions and full episode links so you can enjoy them in full. 160 Forest ravine This precipitous place, high in the Derbyshire hills, flows with birdsong and fresh moorland water. It's aural presence is made almost entirely of natural things. Non-human, natural phenomena. Having this piece of time uninterrupted , and from this elevation, you can watch the geese through the trees as they fly through the ravine's luscious and airy reverberations. 141 Soft land murmuring - Wooler, Northumberland An exposed tree, looking down upon the town of Wooler, high in the Northumberland hills. It stands amidst wide open fields, by an empty bench and an overgrown footpath. The soundview of this wide panoramic landscape changes with the wind. Tawny treetop owls. Sheep. Cawing rooks. Flocks of chattering jackdaws. Wood pigeons, cooing comfortably from their lofty roosts. Then as the wind gathers strength, the soundview shifts to the interior space within the tree holding the microphones. 162 Waterfall gorge on Dartmoor you've made it up, to the Dartmoor gorge. Thick untouched forest, and a rushing torrent, cascading down a rocky, precipitous gorge. Getting here, up and up, along a rocky path through endless trees, feels like a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage to a rarified place, that's lit through day and through night, by brilliant, refreshing, acoustic sunshine. (Since we took this sound photograph we've learned that regions of Woodland on Dartmoor have been designated as temperate rain forest.) 122 Forest bathing in the cathedral of trees A passage of early evening time, captured by the Lento mics recording alone, from deep in the Forest of Dean. They hear wide spatial echoes. Woodland birds singing free of interference. Rich, layered murmurings. And air, moving gently through the high tree tops, of this ancient forest. We think of our sound recordings as sound photographs. Spatial sound scenes taken from one fixed position, over time. Our goal is to share the aural view of a place, in a spatial high detail way that lets you experience the true authentic feel of what it is really like to be there. An aural reality of being somewhere else.
Sat, August 12, 2023
180 Coastal scapes special - August intermission 2
We're taking an intermission during August. Rather than disappearing, we're made you a montage of sound-feels selected from previous episodes. This week's theme is coastal. Listen to four lovely clips of coastal scapes we've captured. Take a tour from Tenby in South Wales, Coldingham Sands in South East Scotland, and Nothe Fort on the Jurassic coast of England. Here are the descriptions and full episode links so you can enjoy them in full. 174 Where cool woodland meets the summer sea At the far end of the long sandy beach at Tenby there's an area of cool, shady woodland. From the distance and under hot summer sunshine, it looks idyllic. Inviting. Under the trees the hot sunshine air is cooler. Laden with sweet musty smells and sappy perfumes. The birds are singing. Their sound reflecting between the trees. Melding with the washing waves. This place is like a temperate greenhouse. A naturally reverberant space. Perfect, to set down, forget about doing anything, and just listen for a while. 178 Waves of the intertidal zone It's late and you're out. in solitude, For an evening walk, on a wide open beach. Tenby beach in South Wales. Here, is white noise solitude. You scrunch over flat corrugated sand towards the shallowing waves. Then wade in. Immersed. Ankle deep and paddling. White noise is everywhere. Waves, are everywhere. Racing. Washing over each other. Left to right. Right to left. Face on. And under. Rushing away, behind you. Tiny bubbles. Sparkling. Shallowing. And dissolving, into fizz. 150 Looking down on Coldingham Sands A bench. Perfectly perched, by the sandy steps that lead steeply down onto Coldingham Sands. Perfectly perched with a sound-view so wide, and angle just right, to hear the incoming waves as they break over outcrops of craggy, elephant-sized rocks. It's a bright August day, and the sun is mistily lighting up the sea, the rocky cliffs, and the plunging, richly vegetated slopes. This place, on the East Coast of Scotland, is special. It's a landscape under a genuinely quiet sky. A sky free of human-made noise, where the detail and quality of natural sound can reach the ear drums intact. 176 Early morning below Nothe Fort A smooth, sunrise sea, heard from a tree, growing up out of a bundle of boulders close to the water's edge. It's early April, and just after daybreak. The Lento kit is in the tree, capturing the wide spatial quiet of
Sat, August 05, 2023
179 Rain scapes special - August intermission 1 (sleep safe)
We're taking an intermission during August. Rather than disappearing, we're sharing a different type of episode, each with a theme, using some of the best bits from previous episodes. This week's theme is rain. Here are four glorious rain scapes. Travel with the rain as it falls, on a wide open coastal landscape, a walled garden in London, and on high moorland woods in Derbyshire. Here are the descriptions and episode links so you can listen to them in full. 146 Fresh air along the Creel Path The Creel Path has been trodden by fisherman on their way to work from Coldingham to the harbour at St Abbs in Scotland, for a thousand years. It's a landscape whose geography leaves it exposed to everything that the sky can bring. By locating our mics within the natural shelter of a tree, and letting them record alone for twelve hours, we were able to capture the full width, depth and range of this place and its unique soundscape. 128 Persistent rain Heavily, this winter rain falls. Persistent. Cold. Wet. Refreshing. In waves. In sprinkling flurries. Over time. Onto the huge tarpaulin stretched across the yard. Each drop's long downward journey is both completed, and revealed, in one tiny moment. Is this just plain old rain? Listen in, especially through a pair of headphones, and layer upon layer of spatially detailed rich textured sound will to you become revealed. 167 An hour under moorland trees There is nothing and no one about. You. Here. Hidden. Up in the Derbyshire hills. Sat, on dry leaf litter, lent against a gently slanted tree trunk. Listening. Just an hour. Under moorland trees. An hour to listen, to the weather, the flurries of rain And the steady ever-changing wind. 156 Sheltered under night rain The city sleeps, under a dark impenetrable sky. In one garden, sheltered under a wide tarpaulin, microphones are recording. Alone. On top of a tripod, and standing, as high as a person. Listening. The tarpaulin, is to them a canvas. It lets them see the rain. In all its spatial detail. A transcriber. A taught thin surface, that catches each raindrop, and changes its collided imprint into crisp edged, spatial sound.
Sat, July 29, 2023
178 Waves of the intertidal zone (Don’t forget Lento’s built for headphones!)
A shadow grey rock, the size of a stranded ship. Radiating heat, remembered from the midday sun. Around it, rock pools, and smooth curving shapes. Like sleeping seals. You're out. Alone. For a late evening walk. Overhead, and behind, the sky is a deep, deepening blue. An end-of-day blue. But to your right, on the low west horizon, it's still blazing bright. This place, this wide open beach, is white noise solitude. All around, empty space. Empty space and sea air breezes. Sea air breezes, and some people. Happy cries, and beach ball thumps. You walk. Scrunch sand between your toes. You swing your legs towards the sea. Head towards the intertidal zone. Stepping on hard ruttled sand. Over furrows of stranded water. For as far as the eye can see. Corrugated land. Low tide land. Shaped into longitudinal lines by the withdrawing waves. Right ahead, bright white noise. And gulls. Just landed on the wetted sand. Rapidly stamping their little webbed feet, to bring up the morsels. A rush. Of cold fizzing sparkling rippling water. Breaks suddenly over your feet. Breaks, and splashes up your ankles. Stops you in your tracks. Swirls and foams and flattens and shallows, all around you. Fills the air with watery sound. Like shimmering blue, shoreline silk. Now you're in, and immersed. Ankle deep and paddling. White noise is everywhere. Waves, are everywhere. Racing. Washing over each other. Left to right. Right to left. Face on. And under. Rushing away, behind you. Tiny bubbles. Sparkling. Shallowing. And dissolving, into fizz. Each one, each wave, adding one more corrugation, on the wide intertidal sand. * This sound photograph of Tenby beach is first try of something new for Lento. We recorded it dynamically, as we walked, in one unbroken 30 minute take. Angling and panning the Lento kit, holding still on wide panoramic views, then panning down almost to touch the water for close-up views of the sparkling bubbles, then gently sliding sideways to chase waves as they race to the shore, as with a film camera. We wanted it to be a kind of sound film. If you can't make it to the beach this month we hope you can enjoy this intertidal sound walk, until you can.
Sat, July 22, 2023
177 Summer meadow woodland edge
You find yourself, suddenly out. On the other side of the wood. The edge, of a wide open empty field. A meadow. Tall elegant trees, given way to a high, bright sky. Standing silently. You can feel the heart of the forest behind you. Hear its echoes. Its leaves near and far, rustling. How one tree creaks. How banks of soft summer air move spatially across the treetops. How trains, passing distantly through the forest, make sound like silver wind. In front, is open grassland. Fragrant. Home to large populations of butterflies. And that sings, with the sound of stridulating crickets. Hundreds. Thousands. All cricketing, under this warm noon day sun. This meadow. These slowly swaying trees. This breeze, in the leaves and grasses. This feeling, of being so near to the cool green heart of this forest. And up, at the sky. And up, at the sun. And the shifting clouds. And the planes, flying from time to time. Flying, from cloud to cloud. * We travelled into Hertfordshire (by train and on foot of course) to take this sound photograph from as near as possible to the Clinton Baker Pinetum one lunchtime last week. It's a fascinating place, rich for forest bathing, first planted in 1767 . We want to take some more sound photographs that capture the range of tree species inside the pinetum if and when we can get permission.
Sat, July 15, 2023
176 Early morning below Nothe Fort
The sound-scene is of a smooth, sunrise sea, heard from a tree, growing up out of a bundle of boulders, close to the water's edge. It's early April, and just after daybreak. The Lento kit is in the tree, capturing the wide spatial quiet of this place with nobody about, right beside Nothe Fort in Weymouth on the south coast of England. Ahead, looking south, the sea. West is Portland. East is Weymouth, then Durdle Door, near to Lulworth Cove. Here, in this little settled spot, and from far left of scene, the sea seems to be breathing, softly, as it sweeps the shingle at the foot of the fort's huge parapet wall. Perhaps it's still asleep. Has it not heard the blackbird? Has it not heard the wren? Or the garden warbler? Maybe. In a dream. From right of scene, where the swell's near and breaking over the boulders, the sea's very much awake. Awake, and moving. Rising, falling. Gently washing the sunlit sharp rocks, in slow, circling motions. High above, in wide circles, are the seagulls. Calling brightly to each other in the first light air. And some stray crows. And ducks. And something else. Something deep. Something that hums. It is, almost musical. Not animal. Or geomorphological. Too powerful, too omnipotent, for that. It's the kind of sound that isn't in the air. But is the air. A ship. And its low humming engine. Moving. Very gradually. Across the horizon. Like a far drifting cloud.
Sat, July 08, 2023
175 Night train sleeper (sleep safe)
The cabin, is compact, in every way. Every inch, accounted for. Every component, slotted in, perfectly. And, with full rucksack and boots and spare boots and string bag, a bit of a squash to get in too. Once you're in though, once you've sorted, and stowed, and made things neat, any claustrophobic feelings will just, well, have magically evaporated. In some curious way, these cabins can somehow, surreptitiously, expand. As the train pulls out of Penzance station, you begin to hear the rumble. A sturdy, rounded edges sort of rumble, a cacophony, of gently juddering low frequency vibrations, that'll sway about beneath you and your bunk as the miles pass, and gradually become your friend. The sound is, dark, and velvety, and when combined with the physical sensation of being horizontal on a cotton soft pillow, deliciously soporific. And there are the other swaying sounds. The tiny creaky movements of all the cabin's fittings. The muffled clunks and clicks, as someone sleepily feels for the night light switch. And The carriage's squeaky suspension, that in your dreams can be a swinging sign, outside some windswept Out West saloon. Howdy friend, welcome to the Old Railroad. Care to come in? But best of all, to us, perhaps to all who slumber their nocturnal way cross country aboard the Night Riviera, is the ever-present, ever fluctuating, omnipotent hum of the locomotive. The giant sized engine, the dynamo, the journey's conductor, that valiantly leads the way into the night, and makes the whole thing happen. And keeps it happening, warmly, and reassuringly, over hundreds and hundreds of dark, dark miles. * This spatial sound photograph, an unbroken sixty minute segment of the journey from Penzance to London Paddington, was taken from within the cabin beside the bunk. It will to those trigger deep and we hope blissful memories of travelling through the night on a sleeper train. If you haven't done this yet, we hope this recording conveys at least some of the unique and soporific sound experience of a night train sleeper.
Sat, July 01, 2023
174 Where cool woodland meets the summer sea (an afternoon snooze)
At the far end of the long sandy beach at Tenby there's an area of cool, shady woodland. From the distance and under hot summer sunshine, it looks idyllic. Inviting. A shady promontory on the horizon that curves and blurs down into the sea. The best way to get there we think, is by shanks pony. Walk, as slow as you like. Go the full length of the beach. Pass the kids playing and the running dogs who couldn't be happier. The picnicing families, and the lone beach ball, waiting patiently to be collected. Steer yourself between the scattered seaweeds of the strandline, and the breaking waves of the shore. Just keep going, but don't forget to stop too. There'll be plenty of bits of flotsam and jetsam that need to be checked along the way. And the odd motorboat, to watch, far out on the water, steadily bouncing over the swell. As you approach the headland, the trees loom. They are towering things. High, with broad boughs that stretch like green sails overhead. Some will be swaying in the onshore breeze. The beach ends here, so step off the soft sand and up and over the ridge of craggy rocks, to the wooden steps leading to the woodland path. A sandy adventure, that leads steep up, under the trees. Climb. Feel how the air cools. Becomes laden with sweet musty smells and sappy perfumes. Hear how the sound changes. How the birds are singing. How their sound reflects between the trees, and combines with the washing waves. The sea enters the lowest footings of the forest along natural inlets that are lined with gnarled and exposed roots. This place is like a temperate greenhouse. A naturally reverberant space, shaped, regulated, and defined, by the sea and the trees. Such a perfect place, to set down, forget about doing anything, and just listen for a while. * Tree canopies can divert over 60% of the sun's heat and so make you cool through a process called evapotranspiration. Source: bbc.co.uk
Sat, June 24, 2023
173 Deep forest time (long & sleep safe)
This is a blend of intimate and wide spatial quiet, captured as it happened from beside an old oak tree, in a remote spot in the Forest of Dean. The time is 3:30am and the microphones are recording alone. It's 90 minutes to dawn. What we hear in the foreground are the intimate textures of a trickling stream, that's completely hidden from view under thickly tangled vines. A hedgehog is foraging through the dense leaf litter, making delicate scratchy sounds like a moving pin cushion. The space immediately around the oak tree holding the microphones is sloping, and partly cleared of trees but only for about ten yards or so. The forest stretches all around for miles. As time passes, high planes overfly the woodland, in soft rumbly arcs. A car, speeding along the country road that bisects this area of woodland, makes white noise like a breeze in the trees. At 36 minutes, sliding from far left to far right of scene, a male woodcock flies through the clearing, making a strange qwacking type call that ends in a bright squeak. This call is known as a roding flight and it returns quite a few times. As dawn approaches, the echoing hoots of tawny owls reverberates sonorously across the huge expanse of the forest. Dogs distantly bark, and farm animals can sometimes be heard. Towards the end, a song thrush begins to sing, short melodious notes in repeated phrases. Dawn is near.
Sat, June 17, 2023
172 Heatwave thunderstorm that washes and cools (panoramic, made for headphones)
Have the back streets faded to silent? Have the dogs begun to bark? Quick, get in, there's a storm coming. The front room chair with the cushion that isn't supposed to be outside in the yard but is, because it's been so hot of late, is that in? And the pile of winter boots left out to air next to it? And those newly potted plants that can't cope with heavy rain yet? Get them all in, the air's gone electric. Thick thunder rolls, across a strange coloured sky. Brings rain that's in such a hurry to get down it all comes down at once. Rivulets of sparkling water, flowing off the tarpaulin. Pouring onto the parched concrete yard. Wafting smells of petrichor. Heatwave storms plough a deep furrow through the sky as they pass, that take a while for the atmosphere to settle. It's the dramatically changing sound scenes such storms create that make them so rewarding to listen to. The sheer intensity of an unbridled deluge. The panoramic spatial thunder created as the lightning bolts explode vast volumes of air. And the relief, after the storm has passed, expressed through the countless dripping drops of fallen water, from all the surfaces on which it fell. Three movements. Three acts. Of a heatwave storm. A powerful storm is like a piece of theatre. It bends and redefines the meaning of time. It suspends your belief in what is normal and your perspective on reality. And when it's over, it leaves you feeling physically different to how you were before. Different, and better. * The Lento mics captured this storm as it passed over Hackney in North East London in early afternoon last week, after a long period of exceptionally hot and dry weather. The location is the back garden of a small terrace house. Temperature prior to the storm was 30 degrees. Humidity was 39%. A few months ago the humidity was typically between 80% and 90%.
Sat, June 10, 2023
171 Sunrise birds in sea washed air
Sunrise over Tenby. Blue sky. Scudding clouds. 5am, and nobody about, except for the birds in the murmuring air of a seaside town. This sound photograph, captured from behind the descending houses on St Johns Hill in Tenby, is spatial, and composed by chance with balanced foreground and background layers. A blackbird right of centre. Another blackbird, mid-distance and left of centre. Far distance, ranging 90 degree left to 90 degree right, wrens and other birds. The white noise of the beach can be heard reflecting slightly to right of centre, off the high wall of a large sided building beyond. Circling seagulls often pass over too, and light up through sound the empty airspace above. This episode follows on from last week's ' Night murmuring in Tenby '. The daylight has come, but still rocking slightly in the breeze, is next door's rusted garden gate. * Tenby is another location we've found that has quiet horizons. There was almost no aircraft noise in the four days we spent there. Quiet horizons we think promote a deeper sense of wellbeing and allow the natural world to be perceived properly. There is some wind noise in this episode due to coastal conditions, but because of the minimal human-made noise, the murmuration of the sea reflected off the nearby buildings is clearly audible even though it is on the other side of the hill.
Sat, June 03, 2023
170 Night murmuring in Tenby (sleep safe)
Tenby. A seaside town on the South coast of Wales. End of May into early June. Late sunsets, followed by warm, springtime nights. It's 1am and the mics are recording alone. Capturing the atmosphere of Tenby, in the dead of night. Behind where we're staying are dim shapes of buildings. A tall tree with whisping leaves. Empty sun loungers and nextdoor's gate, loosely fastened, being moved atmospherically by the gusts. Echoes of distant windchimes. And there above, the deep, dark, quiet sky. And all around, the breezes. How this place sounds. How it rests, in this smallest hour. And murmurates, under its so peaceful sky. So much silky air blowing in from the Atlantic that it's barely any effort to breathe. Soft flowing currents, that billow, cuff, and clean. Listen. Listen. To the trees. Can you hear them? They're breathing for you.
Sat, May 27, 2023
169 Ear witness report from the Hoo Peninsula May 2023
The Hoo Peninsula is a vast open landscape on the Thames Estuary. Huge uninhabited swathes of ground. The mics (recording alone) were lodged in a hawthorn tree on Higham Marshes nature reserve and pointed out over a watery marsh. Close to the mics lapwings, redshank and cetti's warblers call, as well as geese and ducks that are familiar sounds to us urban dwellers. Skylarks circle above the farmland straight ahead on the other side of the marsh. Several pastures, with sheep and lambs in one, grazing cattle in the other. During the quieter periods when planes aren't going over, cattle can clearly be heard tearing up the long grass. We took this 47 minute 'sound photograph' as an ear witness report of everything hearable on Higham Marshes on 14th May 2023 (map reference - 51.450474, 0.464734). Wildlife. Human life. The weather conditions were good - warm, around 20 degrees with a light breeze gusting 3-5 knots. The air was rich with scent of hawthorn blossom, cow parsley, meadow grasses and pollen. The sound photograph is taken from the same tree as episode 73 Slow rhythms of the Hoo Peninsula , that we captured in June 2021. Due to the frequency of aircraft, subsonic throbbing of passing ships, and a strange long lasting clank from the distant Tilbury Container Port, we normally wouldn't have released this as an episode, but we've decided the recording is important as an ear-witness report for two main reasons. First, it clearly shows the step change in human made noise now, compared to June 2021, when the pandemic was heavily impacting aviation and industry. Second, it documents the insect life, wildlife and farmed animals present on and surrounding the nature reserve at roughly the same time of year. Hearing how the birds communicate when planes are passing over, compared to how they are during the periods of quiet, has peeked our curiosity.
Sat, May 20, 2023
168 At the mouth of a sea cave (Lento’s best with headphones)
On Portland Bill. Dorset. We climb down jagged rocks. Naturally formed steps, waist deep, towards the water. Evenly uneven. Like narrow walkways. Some puddles along. Sea spray or resting rain? Now crouched down, she's peering silently into one of the puddles. Look, she says, tiny creatures. They're just speckles, swimming. Rumbling waves roll in from open sea. Break against the sheer rock. Fifteen feet beneath us, deep gurgles. An underwater space, I say, can you hear it? Exposed, then sunk, then exposed again. Can you hear, the way the water seems to bend the air? We listen. Like plucking the opening of a wine bottle, with a wet thumb. Sort of, she says. Is this a good place? She already knows it is. It's where she wanted us to come. Perfect, I say, swinging round the rucksack to unpack the kit. Away up the rock like a mountain goat and she's gone, semi vertically, back up to the path. Now, sitting alone, with the mics, hardly breathing, still as a statue. Almost at the precipitous edge of the cave mouth. Me and the mics, listening. Cave below to the right. Wild sea to the left, it's main power a few hundred yards out. Such still listening, makes me daydream. Eyes shut. Imagining I'm inside the sea cave. The waves rolling towards me. Breaking. Fizzing. Slooshing into craggy pools. Making reflections. In light, and in sound.
Sat, May 13, 2023
167 An hour under moorland trees (rainy and sleep safe)
Just an hour. Under moorland trees. An hour to listen, to the weather, the flurries of rain. How they come and go. And the steady currents of wind. Force rising. Easing. Settling. Rising, rising again. Holding. Then easing. Blowing and sprinkling the falling raindrops over wide, waxy, sheltering leaves. In time. Slowly becoming aware, in the quietness, of how many different layers of sound are not just audible, but readable, in a tucked away place like this. Readable to us, like words scratched into smooth bark. You. Are. Safe. Here. Because you have inherited the understanding of what the trees are saying, passed down by a million years of human evolution amongst trees. And you are immersed. And you are safe. Everything you are hearing is telling your vigilant brain there is nothing and no one about. You. Here. Hidden. Up in the Derbyshire hills. Sat, on dry leaf litter, lent against a gently slanted tree trunk. Listening. Indistinguishable. ------------------------- A thank you to the Lento Supporters Club .
Sat, May 06, 2023
166 Midnight waves at the foot of the sea fort (sleep safe)
Here, in this quiet and empty spot, only the waves can be heard, as they break sedately, upon the rocks. The waves and the velvety silence that seems to press in between them as their gentle energy is dispersed. The tree, to which the microphones are attached, and all the boulders from up which it grows, and the 18th century fort behind and to the left of the scene, remain entirely invisible to the listening ear. Or do they? Witnessing this piece of time, where nobody came, and nobody was. Hearing it, because it is a real place, the spot beneath the tree. In full spatial detail. The way the waves move, the way the silence is always there, like the backdrop of the night sky. Clouding over, with swirls of pale white noise, then clean black, and clear again. Everything, that when heard binaurally, forms a spatial image, shaped and contoured in our auditory brains by the reflective properties of the tree, the boulders and the huge stone parapet walls of the fort. Without these contouring influences, the waves would not make the sound they do By finding a quiet spot to listen, and putting a pair of headphones on, we can, without our physical bodies having interfered in any way at all, put ourselves into the real sound feel of this place. This place, that place, as it was, and is still there, now. * We went back to Nothe Fort in Weymouth at the start of April and made another overnight recording. The landscape around the tree emits a strong sense of quiet, and has become an enchanted spot for us. This section is from midnight. There was a clear sky and a full moon. The waves and the rocks sound different to when we recorded in 2022. Aural evidence of the world, subtly changing.
Sat, April 29, 2023
165 Up in the hills of mid Wales
This episode includes lively birdsong, a trickling stream, foraging bees, a creaky pheasant flapping, a few softly passing vehicles along a country road and a gently droning propeller plane. Sat on a fallen branch, beside a flowing stream. Hidden from sight. An empty hillside road, where only the odd thing goes. This remote, yet sheltered spot, lies quietly and unobtrusively in the hills, a few miles above the village of Ceri. An ancient, wide open landscape. A handful of isolated farms. Sheep graze on the high fields, and the tiny speeding dot of a sheep dog, barks, in broad circles. It's morning, and the activity on the nearby farm can sometimes be distantly heard, between the rilling stream, and the spring birdsong. On the lane just above the secluded dell where the microphones are recording, a rattly lorry trundles by. And in a while, rolls back again, down the winding lane towards Ceri, in the valley. Natural life, and human life, as it really sounds, up in the hills of mid Wales. * This is another section from the twelve hour non-stop recording we made at this location back in 2019. We completely love the sound feel of being up in the Welsh hills, and of being somewhere far, far away. When we returned to the dell to collect the microphones, we couldn't help noticing how perfect the spot was, and how fortunate we were to find it. Listen to all previous episodes from this special location.
Sat, April 22, 2023
164 Garden rain as winter turns to spring (daydream and sleep safe)
After last episode's tumultuous waves upon a dramatic shingle shoreline, this week we retire behind the secluded walls of a little garden, at the back of a small suburban terraced house, for an altogether different sound feel. The sound feel of gentle rain, falling on an empty garden, in the quiet hours, when almost everyone is asleep. We love it this time of year as winter turns to spring. And when the weather forecast is for rain. Loads of rain, in bands, throughout the night. If we can, we may leave the back door open just before midnight for a while, to let the sound in, but the thing about rain is it does not fall to order. You have to wait for it to come, and that can mean hours. Witnessing the falling of the rain is something that can be done by setting up spatial mics to record, all night, and then listen back, to experience the passages of time when the rain did finally come. At the edge of our yard, beside a patch of old raspberry canes, there's a perfect spot where the aural presence of the garden can be heard evenly balanced. The acoustic 'presence' that arises from its physical shape and reflective surfaces, clear. All the upturned half propped up things, evenly spread. Some overhead shelter, centrally positioned. Its where we post the mics, on a tripod, so they can hear everything, evenly. Hear, for us and everyone who couldn't be there to witness it, the delicate sound and changing ambiences, of rain, falling. And when we did listen back, we heard not only the rain, but a nocturnal robin, somewhere far off in another garden, singing, as they do this time of year, in glorious solitude, in the dead of night. ------------------ Love listening to Radio Lento? You can support us here .
Sat, April 15, 2023
163 Chesil Beach (sleep safe and in high-definition sound)
Last week, we walked on Chesil Beach. We felt its steepness. Its shingle. Its sound. We heard its heavy waves. The way the stones are heaved back, in long, ground rumbling sweeps. A wild, brazen place. A bird, wheeling high above, must see Chesil Beach as an endless grey white line spanning from one end of the visible horizon, to the other. From the coast road it looks like a white raging line. The Jurassic south coast of England. Unmoveable land meets unstoppable sea. But as a person sat, hunkered down on a bed of golfball-sized smoothly rounded stones. Coat pulled up against the cuffing onshore breeze just a few yards from the fizzing shoreline. You feel that between the to and fro of the crashing waves, there is a kind of softness to Chesil Beach. A kind of hidden tenderness. A feeling made from time, and the way the frothing water delicately stills, and settles. Stills, and settles. Forms, and dissolves. Endlessly. Breaking waves, upon meek wetted stones.
Sat, April 08, 2023
162 Waterfall gorge on Dartmoor (high definition spatial sound)
When a rushing torrent cascades, down a precipitous rocky gorge. When the intensity of the white noise is so brilliant on your ears, that it feels like acoustic sunshine. You know you're here. When the waterfall's rumble is almost completely absorbed by ground knee deep in the softest, deepest foliage. When all around it echoes throughout a vast cathedral of untouched woodland, that grows up the steep sided gorge, and up, and up again. And it's intense sound blends and sheens back to you, filtered and reflected from the countless leaves and branches above your head. You know that by being here, you've made it. Made it up, to the Dartmoor gorge. Whether it's the journey, and sometimes hazardous climb. Or the gradually growing sensation of remoteness, as you pick your way along the path, up, and up. Or the air, that becomes increasingly filled with a mix of rushing water, and songful woodland birds, and cool negative ions. Coming here, feels like a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage to a rarified place, that's lit through day and through night, by brilliant, refreshing, acoustic sunshine. * We made this recording in April 2022 and released most of it in episode 117. The timeline in this episode partly overlaps with that episode, but we haven't been able to travel back and we feel so drawn to the place that we decided to re-issue part of that section of time with the remaining unreleased material, this time in high definition spatial sound.
Sat, April 01, 2023
161 Fishing village harbour at night - part 2 (sleep safe)
St Abbs. A small fishing village and harbour in bygone times, perched on the coastal edge of South East Scotland. A wonderful place to experience what the world must have sounded like, before machines were invented. It is, for this reason, quite a rare place, where people can go to bathe their ears, uninterrupted, with naturally spatial oceanic noise. To the eye, St Abbs rests along a dramatic coastal landscape, with high jagged cliffs and plummeting rock faces festooned in the daylight hours with noisy kittiwakes. To the ear though, the landscape tells a different story. A story that's about wide openness. About how sound and water waves must travel over long distances. About lofty seagulls, who seem to live in never-ending circles in the astronomically dark sky. Here, looking out over the harbour from an elevated position, the microphones are alone and recording. Capturing the rarified vibrations that waft about like acoustic mists in the salt tinged air. Layers upon layers of soft white, reverberating noise. Sound waves made by water waves. Countless waves, breaking against and revealing to the ear through the total darkness, the harbour walls and the rocky promentaries, that form the seaward edge of St Abbs at night. Want more? Listen to episode 140 - Fishing village harbour at night (part one) . ------------------------ It was Radio Lento's third birthday this week. Thank you for all the lovely messages.
Sat, March 25, 2023
160 Forest ravine
This precipitous place, high in the Derbyshire hills, flows with birdsong and fresh moorland water. It's aural presence is made almost entirely of natural things. Non-human, natural phenomena. The sound-feel when immersed in it, has a depth, a width, and such rich spatial detail, that with headphones on and eyes closed, the sensation of actually being there, in the ravine, can be so strong as to trigger your visual brain to daydream you into it. Daydream you into a place of green, restorative quiet. The ravine is a wilderness. Having picked your way through and up into it's central point, and with your back against the trunk of a sturdy tree, feet wedged against the 45 degree slope on a jutting rock, you feel safe, and hidden. Safe enough to listen, to time passing. Far below, the barely wide enough to walk on path, criss-crossed with exposed tree roots and used mainly by sheep. Below that, the fresh flowing water of Todd Brook, babbling its way shallowly, filling the air with delicate soft white noise. Extreme right of scene, the reservoir itself, and beyond that a hillside road. Having this piece of time uninterrupted , and from this elevation, you can watch the geese through the trees as they fly up and through the airspace of the ravine, right to left. Hear the valley's luscious reverberations. The water timelessly rilling, over the uneven bedrock. The sheep calling, as they graze the steep farmland above. The blackcaps, the wrens , the robins, and all the singing birds, pouring out their perfect mellifluous songs, into this wilderness forest ravine.
Sat, March 18, 2023
159 Pure Northumbrian air (don’t forget Lento’s best with headphones)
A wide open landscape, resting, between gusts of rain-speckled Northumbrian air. This place, on the edge of the Northumberland National Park, is endlessly rural. Mostly farmland. Dotted with far apart sheep, grazing under a silent plane-free sky. It's nearly midday. Hearing the spatial sound of time passing and looking down, from a hill above, on the town clock of Wooler. How might its chimes carry? Through the speckling rain. Between the brisk gusts of scurrying air that cuff around the ears but then, are gone. Green fields sloping steeply down towards the town, framed on either side by tall, well established trees. Trees that transcribe the invisibly moving air into varying blends of white noise. Trees that are home to cooing wood pigeons. Trees seen from afar, as just patches of dark shadow on a green, far away horizon. * This is NOT a *sleep safe* episode as there is a loud bell chime halfway through! ** This is another section from the mics we left out and alone for 14 hours last summer in the hills above Wooler in Northumberland. Listen to the 5am sounds from this special place in episode 141 - Soft land murmuring . *** Every Lento episode is unique and represents an authentic passage of recorded time. We think of them as sound photographs inspired by the French impressionists. Each is an exposure from our own hand-built sound-camera, set up to collect spatial audio depicting the auditory impression of the moment, especially the spatial shiftings of audible textures.
Sat, March 11, 2023
158 That edgeland feel along the Thames near Tilbury Docks (sleep safe)
Bright hazy sunshine. Behind, and up the bank, a winding footpath, littered with discarded sunbleached things. Here, sat still and amongst it all, dense bankside vegetation. Everything dried up, and whisping in a warm late summer breeze. Ripe blackberries growing on renegade edgeland canes. Hints of sunbathing crickets. Slishing shoreside water. Wafts of cludgy strandline clay. The Thames flows from left to right of this sound scene. Far to the right, almost inaudible, Tilbury Docks. Gantry cranes lifting containers light as lego bricks from giant ships. One after the other. Bleeps thinly carried by the cuffing wind. Straight ahead the overgrown slope of the riverbank opposite. Far to the left a ship, approaching. Mid-channel. Steaming east, just twenty miles more to go to pass Leigh-on-Sea, then out onto the open sea. Its huge engine kneads the air with deep, muscle massaging vibrations. Reminds this forgotten piece of wilderness, that it's an edgeland. Taking in the vastness of the river. And listening into its detailed shoreline. And letting the time pass. Such a wide river at this point. Such choppy water. Washing and rewashing the lumpy clay bank, in brisk rocking rhythms. Shifting something small, and tinny. Perhaps it's a fragment of paper-thin slate. Or a slither of metal. The water's revealing an empty thing down there too. Hollow. Maybe a semi-submerged plastic container being slowly unburied from the mud. A little way to the right, along the bank is a rusting wreck. A stranded pontoon bridge, left to rot. Nature will find it something to do, one day, when it's ready. All we need to to, is wait.
Sat, March 04, 2023
157 Immersed in Bayford Woods (an ear-witness account)
Sometimes we feel it's right to share an ear-witness account from a place where natural quiet and human-made noise co-exist. Our last was from the Forest of Dean ( episode 135 which documented the aural reality common to so many 'natural' places today. Human-made noise has quite varied effects and meanings, not always bad. This latest ear-witness account contains sounds familiar to urban dwellers, but that are also found here in a countryside setting in January. This episode contains intense periods of forest peacefulness as well as huge flocks of jackdaws and a woodpecker. One quite distant gunshot is heard plus a heavy passing freight train, more planes than we're perhaps used to, and a tractor that caused the hundreds of jackdaws to take flight. The gunshot happens just before 11 minutes. We did (for listen-ability reasons) cut out over a hundred similar often much louder shots but kept this single one in for the ear-witness report of pheasant shooting season. Surrounded by open farmland in the Hertfordshire countryside, Bayford Pinetum has become a fascinating place to us. Fascinating because each time we visit it seems to have fundamentally changed in some material way, but still somehow maintains its same, curiously mysterious, sound-feel. It's a very picturesque environment. Easy to take photos and feel visually immersed in nature surrounded by ancient trees and a rich carpet of lichen, moss and fungus. It's also not that difficult to imagine why people believe witches and fairies inhabit places like this. To the ear, and during periods of quiet, when no trains or planes are passing, there's a delicate white noise sheen in one part of the forest. It hangs like a fabric, very spatially in the airspace immediately above, as you move along the path. It has a strong enlivening and relaxing effect and is audible on headphones in this sound landscape recording. We think it's the sound of a small babbling stream, about fifty yards from the microphones and down a gully, being reflected off the extensive lattices of winter bare branches and boughs high overhead. Listen to other episodes from this special place .
Sat, February 25, 2023
156 Sheltered under night rain (sleep safe and high definition sound)
The city sleeps, under a dark impenetrable sky. Streets, almost empty. Beneath invisible rainclouds, countless back gardens hold up their hands. Up, as high as they can reach, to catch the falling water. In one garden, sheltered under a wide tarpaulin, microphones are recording. Alone. On top of a tripod, and standing, as high as a person. Listening. The tarpaulin, is to them a canvas. It lets them see the rain. In all its spatial detail. A transcriber. A taught thin surface, that catches each raindrop, and changes its collided imprint into crisp edged, spatial sound. Drizzly white noise sheens. Sharp flurries of scattering pinpricks. Steady mesmerising rhythms. And the shadows, in time, of the slow passing rain clouds.
Sat, February 18, 2023
155 Out on Cooden Beach at night - part 1 (sleep safe)
A mid-February night and you're out on an empty beach, for the cold sea air, and that feeling of wild emptiness. There's nobody about. Past the silent hulk of a huge parked digger on caterpillar tracks, you reach a shoulder high timber groyne (a long, narrow structure built out into the water from a beach in order to prevent erosion.) You pull yourself up and peer over, down into the gloom. The drop onto the beach beyond is too deep. But you don't turn back. Instead, you get yourself up onto the top timber beam, and sit, in a balanced position, and look out to sea. With this bit of extra height you can really hear the width of the beach. The sea, and all the detail of its rolling waves. Their muffled thuds. their frothing crashes. The parnoramic rushing breakers that travel spatially, all the way from the far right to the far left of scene. Aural evidence of longshore drift. Ten minutes later. Settled into the moment. Sense of time regulated not from within, but by the external passage of panoramic sound, you are still as a heron. Listening. Level and straight. Tuned deep, into the dynamic foaming of the intertidal zone. *We captured this sound landscape photograph a few days ago whilst visiting Cooden Beach between Hastings and Eastbourne on the south coast of England. Only one aeroplane and one car are audible throughout this whole section of time, so we might be able to add Cooden Beach to Lento places with genuinely quiet horizons.
Sat, February 11, 2023
154 An Exeter garden awakes
We captured this passage of time on a visit to some friends in Exeter last year in April during a spell of fine weather. It turned out to be a silky soft recording of a spring garden at dawn. It's about 5am and the garden birds are just starting to sing against a backdrop of high circling seagulls. From here, the still sleeping city of Exeter exudes a panoramic aural presence. A wide, steadily murmurating vail of grey brown noise, that's reflecting, and reflecting again off the many parapet walls of the neighbourhood's buildings. We left the mics, as usual, to record alone overnight. Positioned on grass, a few metres from a wooden slatted fence and a pink cherry blossom, they witness the comings and goings of the resident birds. Tuneful robins, who by chance perch on the edges of their territories and sing at each other, like operatic performers, to the left and the right of scene. How charmingly familiar is their song. How liquid. Often shimmery, like sunlight tilted through sliding raindrops.
Sat, February 04, 2023
153 Freezing January rain under Britain’s highest pylon (sleep safe)
At over 600 feet high, and visible for miles, this giant mass of steel pylon on Swanscombe Marsh on the Thames Estuary has a sister. They stand together, like monoliths either side of the sprawling Thames, holding up cables, and silently serving society's insatiable thirst for power. After a shortish walk over the marsh from Swanscombe station, we arrived at the pylon on the Kent side bank. The ground directly beneath the pylon, in between its concrete footings, is flat. Barren, and crackling, under sharp pelting winter rain. Cold and already soaked, we unpack the audio equipment from our dripping rucksack and set up to record. As we pulled out its foldable legs, the mic stand oddly mirrored, on an atomic level, the skyscraper above. We walked on along the new extension of the Thames Path and England Coast Path, and left the mics to record. Their job to capture, uninterrupted, this brutal sound landscape, and to whatever noises the pylon made. The sharp winter rain. The spatial murmurations of this panoramic edgeland world. The rushing sometimes humming noise the wind fleetingly made, as it surged through the loftiest sections of the pylon (centre of scene). The deep pulsating rumble, that we later found (when speeded up) seem to be the long span powerlines, singing subsonically in the wind. A brutally beautiful day under Britain's highest pylon. *The last time we recorded on Swanscombe Marsh (summer 2021) we heard a cuckoo. Amazing! This still surviving natural land is so much more than meets the eye. Listen to episode 77 .
Sat, January 28, 2023
152 High above Folkestone beach
Time aside. And at rest. A quiet, leafy space. Folkestone, on the Kent coast. An area called the Warren, where forested steeps slope and tumble into the sandy wash of the sea. It's early August 2022. A month of heat, like the south of Spain. The sun is up. The air's got that scent of another sweltering day to come. The hedgerow and the hawthorn tree holding the microphones are already hot. Turning the sun's energy into green variegated shades. And into warm leafy thermals. As time passes, and late summer birds distantly call, a little party of beach-bound people scrunch by, scattering loose stones as they go. Straight ahead the white noise hush of the sea slightly rises, and slightly falls. So many crashing waves, smoothed to an average, by distance. From here, within this ordinary looking breeze blown hedgerow, the whole width of Folkestone beach can be heard. Witnessed. From a place called The Warren. England's edge. So close to France you can see it.
Sat, January 21, 2023
151 Dusky echoes in the Forest of Dean
Dusk has come, and the Forest of Dean is, very gradually, darkening. Silence, like dew, is beginning to settle in the voids and hollows between the trees. Shadows, and echoes, are everywhere. In the gathering dim, melodic song thrush, blackbirds, and some roosting wood pigeons are singing the last notes of the day. Sounding, from across this huge space, like they are already in a dream. Time passes. The hidden stream beside the oak holding the microphones trickles, and flows, beneath tangled vines. High planes lazily traverse the velvet sky. Occasionally, cars distantly glide along the fast forest road, to the far right of scene. Filtered by so many trees they make a curved and wind-like hush. Then, in the distance, a dog's barking. And a lamb. Or did you just imagine it? A lamb deep in the forest? And the dog, was that really a dog? Perhaps it's just the dusk, casting dreams upon your senses. But there's a woodcock! No mistake. It's the strangest of birds, making soft quack like calls as it speeds effortlessly between the treetops On its May-time roding flight. And an owl. Two owls. Hooting hollowly, in dusky echoes, from somewhere much deeper in the forest. * This is a late evening segment from the 72 hour non-stop recording that we made last May, in the Forest of Dean. We found and recorded from the same oak tree that we tied our mics to back in 2019! You can hear that recording in episode 17 , and compare how over those three years the sound-feel of the forest has changed.
Sat, January 14, 2023
150 Looking down on Coldingham Sands (January special 2 / 4)
There's a bench. Perfectly perched, by the sandy steps that lead steeply down onto Coldingham Sands. Perfectly perched, because the sound-view from this bench is so wide, and the angle just right to hear the incoming waves, as they break over outcrops of craggy, elephant-sized rocks. It's a bright August day, and the sun is mistily lighting up the sea, the rocky cliffs, and the plunging, richly vegetated slopes. Conditions are calm. A little motor boat is bobbing on the swell, about a quarter of a mile off the coast. It's engine gently thrums the soft air. Land birds and sea birds ride the onshore breeze. They coo, and sing from the dense shrubbery that surrounds the bench. Dogs and owners pass by, as they head towards the open freedom of the sands. This place, on the East Coast of Scotland, is special. It's a landscape under a genuinely quiet sky. A sky free of human-made noise, where the detail and quality of natural sound reaches the ear drums intact. With headphones on, this sound landscape recording (captured spatially by lone microphones) brings you the sound-feel of this place, of sitting on this simple bench, and listening to the ebb and flow of Coldingham Sands.
Sat, January 07, 2023
149 Dawn birdsong from Derbyshire (a brighten up January special 1/4)
Dawn. Bright morning sky. High pressure, barometer rising. A vast quiet sky, etched with a few scudding clouds picked out by the light of the rising sun. Gone is the tranquil hush of night. These remote moorland woods are alive again! Alive and lit up, not just by the morning sun, but by countless singing birds. From a sturdy beech growing beside the ancient track, the woodland sparkles. Sparkles with an abundance of natural life to whom this patch of the landscape is home. It's crossed by a babbling brook that constantly flows with rain water running off the higher ground (audible right of scene). A place that at this time of day is almost completely free of human made noise. No traffic on the fast road other side of the valley. No overflights from rumbling aircraft heading to Manchester Airport. No hikers trudging by. By leaving our microphones out all night, we were able to capture the sound of this remote wood in its most natural state. The wood as it must have sounded in early May, throughout the years, decades and centuries gone by. Thankfully a sound landscape that's still there to enjoy, still connect with, through the clarity of the Lento microphones, and without disturbing the wildlife.
Sat, December 31, 2022
148 Suffolk Wood (part 13) - 8am to 9am
For the very last episode of 2022, and because it's so cold and dank, we want to use the magic of spatial sound landscape recording to teleport back into the summer! It's August 2017, and our microphones are out on their first ever overnight recording, lent up against the trunk of a tree in a rural wood in Suffolk. This passage of raw unedited time continues on from episode 112, and begins as the clock of St Mary's church, far over the fields, is about to strike 8am. A change in wind direction, and raised traffic levels on the A12 several miles away, make the bell sound more distant, and its sequence of chimes harder to count compared to the previous episodes from the dead of night. Wood pigeons, sparkling wrens, rooks and other woodland birds bathe in the bright morning sun, and sing out sonorously, through the richly reverberant spaces created by so many thousands of often very tall and long established trees. Later on, a buzzard can be heard circling, high over. It makes a simple and distinctive downward mewing call. The woodsman, who we had been told may start work just after daybreak, can sometimes be heard shifting fallen branches, and slowly trudging by. As time passes, planes softly cross the sky. Birdsong comes, and goes. There's a loud pheasant that passes, a bumblebee, and some stark snaps from hungry crows. Slow quiet rhythms, of a richly verdant and uninhabited summer wood. A spatial sound recording, that through headphones and for as long as it lasts, lets us and we hope you experience being present there in that wood again, on that warm and peaceful Suffolk summer's day. * This twelve hour non-stop recording was the first we ever made back in 2017. It was this desire to capture the sound of the natural landscape in high quality spatial sound that convinced us to create Radio Lento, as a platform to share the uninterrupted audio. A place to listen to places. You can ** listen to the full Suffolk Wood sequence here **. Our warm thanks to you for listening and supporting. And wishing you a very Happy New Year!
Sat, December 24, 2022
147 The barn high up the moor (sleep safe - atmospheric with headphones)
A barn, that's stood alone on the steeply sloping fields below the summit of Black Hill in Derbyshire, for longer than anyone can remember. This is the sound atmosphere from inside, recorded around 1am this morning. Nobody and nothing is about. Not even the owls, that we've been told nest somewhere within the rafters. A storm is whipping up outside, across the moor. Strong sweeping wind, rumbling against the barn's sturdy stone-built structure. Gusting in, through its deep set windowless appatures. In time, the rain comes. Heavy. Falling onto the foliage outside. Onto the rushing stream that's filled the air around this barn for centuries, with a fine mist of natural white noise. Capturing the sound-feel inside this remote barn has been something we've wanted to do for years. Last night we trudged up the moor, in the pouring rain with our microphones, and left them alone to record. We had no idea what they'd hear. As we returned this morning, it struck us how, with its soft earthy base and timbered upper stage for the dry storage of hay, this barn would have served as a manger. We hope you enjoy feeling the gentleness of this barn. Wishing you and all a very happy Christmas! And thanks for listening to Radio Lento.
Sat, December 17, 2022
146 Fresh air along the Creel Path
Changing weather. Shifting scenes. The east coast of Scotland above St Abbs. A landscape whose geography leaves it exposed to everything that the sky can bring. Wind. Rain. Mist. Brilliant, revelatory sunshine. Here, listening to this landscape from within the leaves and branches of this tree. A lone tree along the Creel Path. The ancient Creel Path that's been trodden by fisherman on their way to work from Coldingham to the harbour at St Abbs, for a thousand years. By locating our mics within the natural shelter of this tree, and letting them record alone for twelve hours, we're able to capture the full width, depth and range of this place and its unique soundscape. What is made can be thought of as an ambient sound recording. Of rain upon the leaves of a small tree. Of a tree being blown by gusts of blustery coastal wind. Of a panoramic landscape made of fields, grazing sheep, and high circling seagulls above. Spatial. With contrasting shifting scenes. But this is more than just an ambient sound recording. Give yourself time to really focus on it. This recording is a real piece of time, captured on-location from a real place, in clean untampered audio. By listening to it, in a quiet place with a pair of headphones, it can work as a virtual aural experience that may shift the sense of conscious awareness. From the place you are listening, to the place that is St Abbs. You, for a while upon the Creel Path, free amongst the fresh air and natural quiet that's found along the coast of Scotland. * We set up Radio Lento as a place to listen to places. The real and authentic sound of naturally quiet and spatial places. Please let us know if you do manage to feel transported by listening, and which episodes seem to work the best. We read all comments and currently use Twitter @RadioLento as our main comms channel (for now!).
Sat, December 10, 2022
145 Curling folding breaking waves (part 2 in hi-def sound)
Hear. This solitude. This real captured quiet. This authentic air. From horizon to horizon. Near empty of human-made noise. Aural solitude. Rare? Becoming rarer? It is there though. It does exist. Out there. And can be found. You can find it here, like we did, at this deserted beach. An uplifting stretch of land half way between Winchelsea and Rye Harbour. It's a place where you can sit down upon the beach, and listen to the sound, of time passing. With nobody about. Nobody and nothing, to blur the pristinely detailed sounds that ocean waves make as they sweep and break over shallow shingle slopes. Break, and bend and quiver the air pockets, that occupy the spaces beneath the waves. A spacious sound landscape, made of soft rounded stones, and natural white noise.
Sat, December 03, 2022
144 Garden beside meadow in the Derbyshire hills
High in the Derbyshire hills, a century-old garden is being blown dry by brisk morning air. It's quiet. Sheltered. Surrounded by strong gritstone walls and tall trees. Over the lower wall is a perfect view. A steep hummocky meadow, and beyond, the vast deep space created by a wide vibrantly green Derbyshire valley. Birds, to whom the garden is home, fleetingly sing, and call. Some flutter right past the lone recording microphones that are tied to a wooden frame. The frame sometimes shifts in the wind and creaks as it so weatherworn and heavily laden with climbing plants. The sound scene is delicately soft and spatial. Like gently billowing fabrics. Hear-able fabrics, made of breezes that rise and settle, and flow from side to side. Hissing textures from the nearby foliage, murmuring and hushing tones from the neighbouring trees. The meadow beside the garden is scattered with grazing sheep, and the odd roaming chicken. When sometimes the warm sun peeks through the gaps in the cloud, wood pigeons coo. Aural sunbeams, in a peaceful, moorland garden.
Sat, November 26, 2022
143 Lullaby waves by Nothe Sea Fort (sleep safe)
Peering out from atop the high seawall of Nothe Fort. Two o'clock in the morning. High tide, and the sea below feels so near. Overhead the sky is faintly luminous. But is dense black, out over the sea. Even blacker out over the invisible presence of Portland, somewhere over to the right. Hearing the night's velvet silence, rippled by slow moving, crisp edged waves. Crisp edged, watery waves, that sound like shapes. Ocean swells, that fill the spaces between the submerged rocks. Sway the empty moored boats. Are these waves just normal waves? Or have they come here, to Nothe Fort, for a reason? Notice how they hang around, at the foot of the fort's huge parapet wall. How, in graceful arching circles, they seem to come, but not really go. Come, and join other waves already arrived, to combine, and elaborate, and form new, even more graceful watery shapes. Watery shapes, that swirl in the dead of night around the ancient stone footings of Nothe Fort. ------------------ This is the third episode from our night recording from the Fort. Listen to episode 124 and episode 118 for more from this wonderfully peaceful place. ------------------ Big Lento thanks to Exploration Project on Twitter who kindly found a perfect photo of sea at night we could use in this episode to illustrate it. Thank you!
Sun, November 20, 2022
142 All aboard the Night Riviera (source of dark brown soporific noise)
It's gone dark. It's 21:15. And you're standing on platform 1 of the railway station in Penzance. Bright lamps light the long platforms, and seaside smells waft in the air. Wheely bag at your side, you're waiting to board the legendary Night Riviera . A long, impressive line of carriages hiding stylish cabins and bunks within. Departing Penzance 21:45. Arriving London Paddington 05:04. Far away at the front of the train thrums a Class 57 locomotive. It's charging the air with a subsonic, deep brown hum. As you wait, a motorbike speeds along the road behind the station. It makes an arc of wide reverberant sound. You listen to its drone stretching away. Then, to the luscious spacious echoings, of this tranquil, end-of-the-line Cornish railway station, after dark. Suddenly a handful of people are discreetly hurrying up the platform. Passing by humming coaches, pulling down cold metal handles and heaving open doors. Climbing and lifting bags aboard. And being introduced by smart uniformed stewards to the cabins. Each is equipped with two neat bunks, the slimmest of slimline wardrobes, and an interestingly shaped bulbous sink with a lid that doubles up as a shelf. You unpack your bed things, then return to the vestibule to witness the moment the Night Riviera sets off. A nocturnal journey across Cornwall, over the Tamar bridge, along the Jurassic coast and through the long stretch of Wiltshire and Somerset. As the train pulls off, you can just make out the wild sea, the crashing waves, and a dark shadow that is St Michael's Mount. Swaying carriages, knocking rails, squeaking suspension and steel wheels rolling along miles of steel rails. Now it's time to make your way back to your cabin. Head down the shoulder-width corridor lined with smart panel doors. With a sturdy slam enter the cabin and notice the change in sound! The velvety quietness is almost deafening. Like falling into a soft duvet! Climb into pyjamas. Lift lid of bulbous sink, and brush teeth. Roll into bunk bed, set alarm, adjust covers, and, sleep? The aural experience of being in a bunk on a sleeper train is completely spellbinding to us, which is of course why we wanted so much to make and share this recording. The thumps and clunks. The squeaks and bangs. The dull thudding as people walk along the corridor outside. The thrum of the rails. The whine of the electrics and the locomotive, as it pulls you through the night. It's enchanting. It's aural poetry. Rich, soporific sounds, that meld together in rocking rhythms. Dark, brown, cushioning noise, that sends some off to sleep. Others may find themselves held in a deliciously mesmerising doze, a state of semi-conscious slumber. What is even more special, is when the train calls at a station along the way. Gradually slowing. Then gently stopping, with doors distantly slamming, and people muffledly boarding. Then, with
Sat, November 12, 2022
141 Soft land murmuring - Wooler, Northumberland
An exposed tree, looking down upon the town of Wooler, high in the Northumberland hills. It stands amidst wide open fields, by an empty bench and an overgrown footpath. It stands. And it feels the time passing, through the slow undulations of the wind. Bright cloudful skies. Rain expected. Then out across the valley the bell strikes. Reverberantly. Five shining tones to tell the sleeping town of Wooler that this is the fifth hour of this new, Northumbrian day. Two tiny birds leap to attention, from their hidden places inside the tree. The soundview of this wide panoramic landscape changes with the wind. Tawny treetop owls. Sheep. Cawing rooks. Flocks of chattering jackdaws. Wood pigeons, cooing comfortably from their lofty roosts. Then as the wind gathers strength, the soundview shifts to the interior space within the tree. To the hushing currents of moving air pressing through its dense and complex branch structures. To the light countless flutterings of its small, crisp edged leaves. Soft undulating murmurings, of the land that is Northumberland.
Sat, November 05, 2022
140 Fishing village harbour at night (sleep safe)
This is real quiet from the middle of the night, captured from a point above the harbour of St Abbs on the East Coast of Scotland. Car-free. Plane-free. Just the sparse and spacious cries of circling gulls, and the faintest hum of a fishing vessel anchored somewhere out at sea. This remote, thousand-year-old fishing village is to us a place defined by its quiet horizons. Its single country road and empty panoramic plane-less skies. Where the lack of human-made noise means you hear the sound-feel of the place itself. This 'sound landscape' is produced in keeping with the natural experience, so through headphones you can feel the real place through your ears. Hear the sea-washed piers and jetties of St Abbs, captured in 'one take' by our high spec wide angle microphones, recording on-location and alone. * We often travel long distances to capture the quiet we share in our weekly sound landscapes. Each episode is unique, fully authentic, highly spatial and sonically detailed. Genuine peace and quiet is endlessly fascinating to us, as well as refreshing and rejuvenating. Hearing the sound world around us without talking over it, or adding music, loops or effects, is the reason Radio Lento exists! If you can please **support us on Ko-fi** or by give us positive reviews wherever you get the podcast. Thank you.
Sat, October 29, 2022
139 Old rafters brewing storm
At the top of the old Victorian house are several flights of dim, dark stairs. Steep. Narrow. Cold. They lead up to a pair of rarely used attic rooms. As you climb, you feel the dust on the banisters. The threadbare carpets. The loose, unsteady floorboards. A small landing greets you at the top, with a single empty chair that's facing the wall. And two doors. The first opens into a small box room. It's full with shadows, and stacks of long forgotten things. Between the boxes, pushed against the far wall, beneath a tiny blurry window, is a slanted wooden form. A child sized school desk, with a lifting lid and a round hole for an ink pot. This little desk, behind the boxes and the shadows of the attic box room, feels like a place far away. a place that's good for sitting, and listening. To the wind rumbling in the chimneys. To the gusts that moan through the tiles and rafters. The resonations inside the roof voids. All the strange and eerie sounds of a brewing storm, from an attic room at the very top of an old Victorian house.
Sat, October 22, 2022
138 Ocean peace above Folkestone beach (sleep safe)
Dusk gathering, we found a stony path, and followed it. Microphones still in the rucksack. It'd been a long day, and we still hadn't found the right place to record. Time. Night approaching. Two pairs of feet dislodging loose stones. Passing through thick stubby trees, and winding steeply. Then suddenly we're there! There, exposed, and looking out over a panoramic, coastal landscape. Breathing. Soft, warm, silky August air. Still, and standing, to listen, by a hedgerow. By a hedgerow with a hawthorn tree with a strong sturdy trunk. Thorny but perfect to hold the mics. Then tying up the mics with hands catching on thorns, before leaving, to let them record alone. Alone. And through the night. Rising thermals, from far below carry up the ocean's murmurings. Its undulating white noises. Its timeless surging waves. Its sandy shoreline flows. And long after we're gone a dark bush cricket comes. Comes to be beside the hawthorn tree. Comes to mark the time, passing.
Sat, October 15, 2022
137 Night rains amongst moorland trees (sleep safe)
Up a soily slope, almost too steep to climb, nestled in against the smooth trunk of a tree, the microphones are recording. Recording the sound of solitude. Dry inside their weatherproof box. Listening, carefully. Witnessing, faithfully, the moments of passing time. The tip taps of raindrops. The gently surging currents of moving air. And as the movement calms, the undulating views of the nocturnal landscape beyond is heard. This is a place where the trees live. A remote place, where nobody goes. Steep soily ground that looks down over a hidden valley. From afar it looks like just another shadow, along the moor.
Sat, October 08, 2022
136 Curling folding breaking waves (high-definition sound and sleep safe)
Wide silent sky. Still warm air. Having followed a country footpath across miles of open farmland you reach a stony bank and, like a natural magic trick, it leads you down onto a deserted, shingle beach, animated with its own soft crashing waves. Nobody's about. Really, nobody. It's a stretch of beach between Rye Harbour and Winchelsea that's somehow, perhaps for you, kept itself perfectly deserted. It's the sort of place you've been longing for. Now all you need is time. You find yourself scanning the horizon. Surely somebody must be about on this warm October Sunday. Layered shingle berms stretch out to the left. Pristine water out ahead. A heavily laden timbered groyne to the right, bearing all the weight of the longshore drift. There is really no one here. Except for a distant calling seabird. Scrunching forward, and a few yards from the wetted shoreline, you find a patch of shingle, fold your coat, and sit down to listen to the waves. They're so close, and yet so soft. So full and detailed, as they curl, and fold, and crash onto the beach. Soft crashing. And soft sifting textures, of shifting shingle. You wonder about time. If it's been five minutes, or ten. But your hands are resting now, feeling the cool stones. There really is no need to check. No need to move.
Sat, October 01, 2022
135 A natural sound report from the Forest of Dean
This is a segment of time from a clearing deep in the Forest of Dean. Echoing birds in full voice. Soft hushing breezes in high treetops. Then, over time, a band of fresh summer rain, falling in rich spatial detail over countless broad-leaved trees. It's a natural environment. The sort of place people travel to, to get away from it all. To get a dose of green health, because it ticks all the boxes. It's remote. Proper countryside. Far away from major roads and industrialised, built-up areas. So, a place where unnatural noise should be almost non-existent. To get here we travelled several hundred miles by train with our audio equipment, staying in the Gloucestershire town of Lydney. We covered the last five miles on foot. We found the same tree we recorded from back in 2019 and set our mics beside it to record on their longest mission so far. Hooked up to a huge battery, we left them alone to record non-stop over a four-day period. We imagined how we'd capture the sounds of woodcock on their twilight roding flights. Owls hooting in the dead of night. Brilliantly songful dawn choruses. Hours of pure birdsong in the warm daylight. All pure and free of human-made noise. We have managed to capture these amazing sounds, but what's also revealed is just how much human-made noise there is too. We've not been able to find natural daytime quiet lasting for more than about 15 minutes. From aircraft to the exhaust sounds of motorbikes and other motor transport, the sound-feel of the forest is strongly shaped by unnatural things. The natural environment is recognised as vitally important to our health and wellbeing, but it's highly permeable to unnatural noise which can carry over many miles. Its effect on the experience of being within nature can be heard in this episode, particularly over the first five minutes. It shows how just one passing motorbike becomes the main sound feature of the forest for a significant portion of time. How the number of journeys that people make, in that area and the design of the machines they use, combine over time to interrupt and break up the forest's own natural sound presence.
Sat, September 24, 2022
134 Night waves rolling onto Coldingham Sands (sleep safe)
Up steep steps from the sandy beach, and a birds-ear view of ocean breakers from a thicket, perched half-way up the cliff. Several hours to go before low tide. Directly ahead slow rolling waves, breaking over outcrops of large craggy rocks. It's the dead of night, here on Coldingham Sands. An empty, uninhabited land, under a sky of almost astronomical darkness. An area of land mostly free of human things. Quiet, enough to hear the rumbling undersides of the breaking waves. Time. Gradually shifting contours, as the tideline recedes. We captured this natural aural landscape and all its uninterrupted spatialness last month near St Abbs in Scotland. As we walked the cliff path to set up the equipment late the previous evening, the silence in the sky was the thing that struck us most. It created a palpable, almost velvety sensation in us. This sense of silence is not, as we've discovered, a purely aural experience. It's something that seems to be felt rather than heard, although it does come from what is heard. Microphones can't record silence, they can only capture actual vibrations, and silence is the absence of vibrations. What's come out from this particular sound recording expedition though, is a very precise sound-picture of the shapes, over time, that waves make as they first roll onto the rocky margins of land. Silence is for sound recording like good light is for photography, the more there is, the greater the detail that is captured in the picture.
Sat, September 17, 2022
133 Vivid rain - rolling thunder (very spatial experience with headphones)
A rare night amongst nights. A dark landscape, subdued, beneath immense and invisible storm clouds. It's just past eleven thirty on Monday the fifth of September 2022. The kitchen was in darkness. The light was off. But the little door leading into the small garden beyond was open. We'd left it open, because there was this palpable sense that an event was about to happen. Though strangely peaceful outside, and still, the rain had begun to fall. There was electricity, in the air. And subsonic rumbles, from afar, that sent the thin metal oven tray drying on the hob into faint, buzzing vibrations. Over only a few minutes, the rain became heavier. And heavier again. That warm drenching kind of rain, that tumbles rather than falls out of late summer skies, and suddenly abates. It cascaded onto hurriedly covered garden things. Poured in rivulets and sung as it sank down through the hollowness of the drains. Holding high the microphone box, we silently glided around, angling it straight up into the sky, and hoping, to catch the thunder. Powerful flashes came. Cavernous rumbles followed. Sounds that rolled, like unimaginably huge boulders across the immensity of the sky. Sheet lightening, superheating the air, causing it to explode in acoustic shockwaves. A natural phenomenon, that like few other experiences, lets us see through our ears the true dimensions of the heavens above. * Listen out for the umbrella that we quietly guide over the equipment towards the end. The amount of water falling directly onto the box meant we had to do it! * We are able to keep capturing sound landscapes like this and bring them to a public audience with no upfront cost thanks to everyone who donates to Radio Lento . Every pound is put towards the costs of maintaining the recording and production equipment, travelling out to locations, and digital distribution. We don't get any payment each time the podcast is downloaded, even though some distributors stream our material to listeners who are paying them, as well as us paying to get the podcast available on their platform. Thank you for each donation, and thanks to everyone for listening. The more downloads we get the greater the chance we might be able to attract ad-free and sustainable sponsors.
Sat, September 10, 2022
132 A bird watcher’s outpost beneath the telegraph wires
Warm sunlit afternoon. Late August. On the nature reserve at Mucking, beside the Thames in Essex. A bird hide. Perched on a steep bank amongst reeds, looking out on a strip of newly exposed mud. Tide falling. Water receding. Soon, when enough mud is exposed, maybe the curlew will come. "Listen" a voice says. From inside the bird hide. Though empty, someone is there. Between the bright of the slot windows, within the shadow, there's a figure, of an old man. Not creaking its timber floorboards, he moves towards the threshold, but then stops. "Can you hear it?" He asks, in a soft brown tone. A curl of smoke from his pipe wafts on the breeze. Softly washing tidal water. Breezes rustling in tall reeds. A cricket, there but barely perceptible, hiding somewhere. Basking in the sun. This place, beside the bird hide, though near habitation, feels beyond civilisation. On the edge of something else. Like an outpost. But what can the old man mean? A single drifting seagull. Faint noises of the bankside industry. Or is it that nearby clink, of loose metal on stone? "It's all around," he says, slowly raising his arms as if to fly away. "In the all around". Subtle. There, and not there. A low, undulating hum. A slow, quavering tone. What is it? The old man smiles. "They say it's the wind in the telegraph wires". Then backs, and disappears into the shadows inside the bird hide. As if in reply the sound rises, and falls. Rises, and falls again. Marking the quiet. Marking the time. "It's just the voice, of the wind". * We recorded this piece of captured quiet on the almost completely deserted nature reserve at Mucking on one of the last days in August. The wind in the telegraph wires is subtle, and worth finding a pair of headphones and a quiet place to listen. At about 29 minutes the curlews do come. We still can't work out what is making the occasional chinking noise. There was nobody at all about. Someone (not any of us) does walk along the path next to the bird hide near the end.
Sat, September 03, 2022
131 A thousand years along the Creel Path
A straight and stony path heads through open country, towards the sea. Beside the track, amongst land in-between, a tree. Lone and leafy. Like a sentry. Exposed and standing. It watches the sea birds. Hears their wide and freeing calls. Feels summer gusts of salty air. And listens, to a distant thrum. A vessel. At sea. Slowly passing. It's daytime. Rain clouds are moving overhead. Loose stones lie along the narrow track, wettening, and darkening, and waiting, for the first feet of the day. In the hedgerow, the tall grasses wave on the edge of golden fields with sculptured hay bales resting. Sheep graze. Jackdaws fly, against a slender band of ocean grey. Time passes. From within the tree, raindrops are landing amongst broad green leaves. This is how the world sounds from the Creel Path, a track that runs from Coldingham to St Abbs on the east coast of Scotland. The route has a history going back a thousand years. In bygone times, fishermen used it to trudge to their gruelling work. We left the microphones alone to record in the only useful tree we could find on this stretch of the path. It looked out towards the sea, about a quarter of a mile away. The same view for 1000 years.
Sat, August 27, 2022
Daydream 4 - water rain wind
Children play on a soft sandy beach by the Essex Wildlife Trust nature reserve at Stanford-le-Hope. When the tide goes out, this amazing hidden beach is revealed. Water laps. Families bask in the sun. Distant engines of passing marine vessels thrum the air. It's hard to believe that this is reclaimed, re-wilded industrial land. As east as you can go, deep amongst the sedge grass on Wallasea Island the temperature climbs above 30 degrees. Insects busy and buzz on hot rising thermals. Warm wind whirls and whisps. Here, below the footpath, near an inlet brimming with water, a pocket of perfect summer quiet simmers in the heat haze. Low tide on an empty shingle beach near Felixstowe Ferry, with the waves rolling in. The sun is high in the sky, shining almost directly down onto a calm North Sea. Blue sky. Nobody about. Far away on the horizon you see a container ship is about to disappear over the horizon. Time just to stand, and imagine where it might be going, and enjoy the spatial sound of waves advancing and retreating around your feet. In-land now. Rain. Heavy rain. Persistent rain. When a gloriously refreshing soundscape comes to you, and begins to land all about. All about your home, the space around your home, and the streets and gardens nearby. Millions and millions of tiny percussive drops, falling, and landing, from invisible high up clouds. Each drop ends its long downward journey, on top of an upturned plant pot. An old paint tin. A concrete paving stone. A tarpaulin stretched over a little back yard. And there it is. Bliss! Free moorland wind gusts through the branches of an old, lone oak tree. It stands tall, in the corner of a windswept field, beside a gritstone wall and a metal gate, that chinks, and an ancient footpath. A Peak District tree, with wide reaching bows laden with wind catching leaves. How many storms has this tree survived? How many droughts? How many days of grey? And of bright afternoon sun, like this one, where country walkers pass from time to time. This is the unique sound that this tree makes, high on a hill above the railway line between Chinley and Edale, Derbyshire. -------------------------- Don't forget that from next Saturday we're back to our normal service posting up a new and unique piece of captured quiet every week. For now here's where to listen to the full episodes from this final daydream: 24 - Peace beside the tidal Thames near Stanford-le-Hope in the county of Essex (24 minutes) 80 - A doze in the grass on Wallasea Island (39 minutes) 70 - Blue sky. Empty beach. Low tide. (36 minutes) <a href='https://radiolen
Sat, August 20, 2022
Daydream 3 - rain water woods (new material coming soon)
It's the dead of night. Along an exposed stretch of seawall East of Burnham-on-Crouch, a deluge has started. Rain lashes down from a pitch black sky onto the swirling water of an out-going tide. This is the River Crouch, and the microphones are capturing the essence of this nocturnal estuary landscape, opposite Wallasea Island in Essex. Bright daytime, on Landermere Creek. Wild water surrounded by green fields and farmland. Gulls, redshank and curlews speed up and down the creek on fast, blustery breezes. In this place there's a strong sense of escape, and of a world where land, sea and weather interlace. On a rock, closely suspended above a small patch of exposed shell beach at the mouth of the Blackwater Estuary, near Bradwell-on-Sea, the microphones capture the pristine detail of the incoming tide. The way these particular waves move. the way they lap, and hurry along the contoured rocky edges, as the tide slowly rises. It's a sound that no matter where you are, or what you're doing, happens twice a day, everyday. We stumbled upon a fallen tree whilst walking over Galley Hill near Epping Forest. the M25 sounded further away than usual, so we tied the mics under its steeply angled trunk for some shelter, and left them to record the ambience of the place alone. Some rain falls in large heavy drops, from ominous grey clouds seen from miles away approaching. But this rain didn't. It fell from an open sky, light as it was light grey. Flocks of jackdaws flew overhead, surveying the wide open fields between the outcrops of trees. We always set out to capture the closest 3D aural experience we can, so with a pair of headphones, you can close your eyes and feel yourself present somewhere else, somewhere perhaps more natural, and peaceful, but without our human presence disturbing the nature that lives there. As dawn breaks over a wood in Suffolk, the mics capture, almost close enough to touch, a rare experience of small furry animals, scampering about with each other, on the crisp summer-dry forest floor. ------------------------------- Thanks for listening and for spreading the word about Radio Lento, a self-funded podcast helped by listener recommendations and donations. Last May we went to the Podcast Show in London and walked about feeling like ducks out of water! Ad spend, business plans, audience growth and sales. We're typing this in a Youth Hostel far far away, with the mics still out on their overnight record, and being pelted by rain, we feel much better. Here's where to listen to the full episodes featured in this daydream: 90 Wind on water, night curlews, rain later *sleep safe (39 minutes) 79 Essence of estuary (32 minutes) 81 R
Sat, August 13, 2022
Daydream 2 - lazy summer days
Wondering along the path from Althorn to North Fambridge in Essex. Skylarks! Their contented never-ending songs, wheeling about slowly in the warm thermals somewhere, high above. Almost as far as the eye can see, a vast waist-deep plantation made of millions of waving stems and leaves is catching the breezes, shushing and sissing in sympathy with the moving air. This, is open country, crossed by the rippling River Crouch on its way to the North Sea. A blackbird sings, out over the swirling water at Wrabness. It's perched high up in a gnarled tree, leaves catching the softly flowing breezes. It's the closest of a whole bank of trees to the estuary water, and the last before the mud of the exposed shoreline begins. The tide's just turned. A warm, quiet summer afternoon, and nobody's about. Midday in August. Sun beating down. Strong, radiant heat. It's making the crickets cricket in the grass beside the marina. Cool, deep water, glinting, with lines of sailing boats, all moored up. Their masts knock in the wind, and sometimes sound like bells. Seagulls. Out over the basking River Crouch, Inland, across the other side of the vast county of Essex, the churchyard of St Mary's Gilston is at rest. It's unusually peaceful because it's under a very quiet sky. Rare. A phenomenon of 2020 and 2021. A secluded spot, where walkers can stop, ease their feet on the wooden bench, and listen to wood pigeons cooing on the warm slates of the church roof. Towards London, where the last piece of Essex country blends into the series of lakes that make the Lee Valley Park, the night is coming. The paths, usually busy with people enjoying their freedom, are empty. No more bikes and scooters. No more barking dogs. No more chasing kids with trikes and ice creams. Just dark bush crickets under the hedgerows, and swans, slowly swimming over still, twilight water. And the echoing hoots of owls. Listen to the full episodes where these short daydreamy clips are from: 116 - Sissing plantations in open water (25 minutes) 75 - Wrabness (32 minutes) 84 - Down at the marina on a working day (37 minutes) 65 - Songs from the churchyard (50 minutes) 54 - Norman's Pond at night (45 minutes)
Sat, August 06, 2022
Daydream 1 (a series of short August adventures)
Begin, by a country church on the hills above Harlow in Essex, and at the foot of a jovial fir tree, hushed by warm wind. It's a sunny afternoon and a blackbird is singing in the secluded churchyard of St Mary's, Gilston. Wood pigeons are sunning their wings on the old slates of the church roof. Great tits call from the long hedgerow that forms a natural boundary to the open fields beyond. The open fields beyond. You slip into a daydream, and imagine yourself not beside vast open land, but beside a vast, and open sea. You can almost hear the waves lapping. No, not quite lapping, it's more that they're washing in. Washing in on an incoming tide, from the cool expanse of the North Sea. You're on the Blackwater estuary, listening to the waves coming in. Playfully flowing over tiny, feather light shells, that form a carpet under your warm, bare feet. Hot noon sunshine. Eyes blurring. Rising thermals from the dense sedge grass, and a heat haze to make you think you're in a dream. Now you're on Wallasea Island, a little further down along the Essex coast. A nature reserve, and a home to wild birds and countless buzzing insects. It feels like high definition. Pristine and taught with high frequency sound. The aural evidence of an ecosystem that's being nourished with more of what it really needs to exist. Bask for a minute, in its existence. Its intense August heat, and all its life-affirming sound. And then, to a different kind of place. A creek, along which gulls and redshank and curlews swoop and fly as they hunt for food. A place where sea water ingresses inland, to blend with rolling farmland fields and little collections of homely houses and a beach with gnarled wooden groins. This is Landermere Creek near Thorpe-le-Soken. A cool summer's day with a big sky, a day of changeable weather. Rain clouds are approaching the creek, Dark grey. Heavy. But the birds are flying headlong, all the same. You follow the rain clouds, inland. Float over miles and miles of land, criss-crossed with rivers, and roads, and strips of woodland, and buildings and settlements. Towards, but not quite, to London. By now the clouds are out of rain, and are now, just clouds. Below is a lake, No, a collection of lakes, Darkening, but that still just about reflect the clouds. The dusk is rapidly gathering. Far below, on the ground, on the thick overgrown ground that forms one bank of a large lake-like pond known as Norman's Pond, the dark bush crickets have come out. Cricketing their sharp, precise stridulating sounds to each other. Then along comes a creature. A small mammal, of some kind. Squeaking, like a children's toy. Can it be real? Where has it come from? It comes, and goes, through the leaf litter, on its jerky, squeaky way. Perhaps the swans, out dabbling on the smooth still water, will know... ---------------------------------------- These minute segments are taken from the following full episodes: <a hr
Sat, July 30, 2022
130 Dartmoor stream above waterfall gorge - hydrotherapeutic + * sleep safe*
After an hour's steep upward toil, through a thickly wooded gorge and along some very precipitous granite rock formations, you reach a wooden footbridge. Here the landscape's totally changed. Just dense bracken, a rough winding path, all slanted steeply up to a wide open sky. Somewhere, up there you think, is an ancient stone circle known as the Nine Maidens. But no Dartmoor walk should be done, or needs to be done, without stopping to take in the atmosphere. This footbridge is a natural stopping point. You rest on its weather beaten beam, look down into the tumbling stream, and think at how it nourishes the woodland below. The air is rich with the smell of verdant undergrowth, moist rock and deep green mosses. Then you see an interesting tree, a little further on, growing beside the water. At the tree, you sit down for a rest. Looking up, you see it's several types of tree, growing together as one. In front of you begins the wood that runs down into the valley. Behind you the bare path up to the Nine Maidens. But here, in this spot beside the tree, and for this little piece of time, you've found some pure, watery bliss. Feeling the tree's soft bark against your back and the luscious cushioning moorland grass beneath your outstretched legs, you let the richly spatial flowing water lull you into a delicious, dreamlike doze. --------------------------------------- * We captured the sound feel of this place only a few days ago on Dartmoor, above Okehampton. This 35 minute segment of time shows how a stream is made up of constantly yet subtly shifting formations of richly textured sound, that can be really helpful as a focus for an overly busy or overly tired mind. ** Over August we're pausing the release of new material so we can travel and find more quiet places. Instead we'll be posting collections of clips we made for Essex Wildlife Trust, along with links to the full episodes so you can listen without having to search the back catalogue. Thanks so much for listening and for your on-going support, including donations which we combine with our own money to keep the podcast going. This week we reached a significant milestone of 200k downloads. Have a lovely August and we'll see you in September!
Sat, July 23, 2022
129 Pristine quiet to early dawn (includes woodcock roding calls in full spatial detail)
For this week's episode we're back in the Forest of Dean for a different kind of captured quiet. Quiet that transforms from one thing to another. A kind of sonic metamorphosis. The segment from this overnight recording begins at around 4am when the space around the oak tree holding the microphones is still pitch dark, and pristine quiet. Intimate. A clearing, deep within an expansive forest, where the night air carries so little sound that only the trickling stream can be heard. It reflects narrowly off the trunk of the tree, like the flickering light of a campfire. But when a woodcock flies by, on its *roding flight, the sense of pristine space is temporarily revealed. This sense of closeness, of being beside an old oak tree and a trickling stream, surrounded by dense and tangled undergrowth, continues, occasionally graced by the distant hooting of an owl, and a passing high altitude passenger plane. But then, something in the forest changes. Strange new sounds, floating in, from far beyond. Fragments of distant birdsong. Filtered through countless trees, countless empty voids. Echoing, and reverberating. The intimate space, thinning, giving way, opening out, and lightening, through the gathering sound. A song thrush, heard left of centre of scene, sings out and becomes the first real soloist of this newly evolving place. Widening. Expanding as each new bird joins in song. The proportions of the space growing, from an amphitheatre. Then, to a cathedral. * In late spring male woodcocks make roding flights to attract females. Just after dusk and just before dawn, they fly at speed through the treetops making a combination call that sounds like a quack that ends with a squeak. This recording captures the roding flight in 3d spatial audio and so reveals the way the bird is moving.
Sat, July 16, 2022
128 Persistent rain (long, sleep safe, may ease heat fatigue when used in combination with a fan)
Heavily, this winter rain falls. Persistent. Cold. Wet. Refreshing. In waves. In sprinkling flurries. Over time. Onto the huge tarpaulin stretched across the yard, each drop's long downward journey is both completed, and revealed, in one tiny moment. It's actually quite loud! And so dense and complex and layered with detail that we tend to hear it as, well, just rain. Just plain old, simple, rain. Listen in though, especially through a pair of headphones, and layer upon layer of spatially detailed rich textured sound will to you become revealed. And if you're in the mood for it, for some really good, long, refreshingly detailed rain, it seems the longer it goes, the more it holds your attention. Rain, depending where you live in the world, can be a very ordinary thing. But it is also a very spacious and complexly detailed thing. Best captured with panoramic binaural microphones. When it comes, it redefines the place it lands. In fact, it entirely changes it. Before the rain came, this little backyard, was just some outside space, waiting for another day to come. But with its collections of things, so many of them resonant to the tap and patter of the falling drops, the space suddenly transformed, and became full and bright with meaning. The canopy and the upturned paint tins. The empty plastic tubs, the wide leafed shrubs, small bushes and the old shed with broken boxes on top. The stack of old planks lent up against the outside wall, beneath a dripping gutter, the exposed patch of concrete paving and the dull wintering grass. And the lone discarded football, kicked into the middle of the lawn. Every thing. Revealed in sound. By falling rain.
Sat, July 09, 2022
127 Mirrored ambiences from a summer meadow at Wrabness
With Wrabness station behind us, the footpath stretched ahead. A warm summer day. Skylarks singing overhead. Sweet scented breezes freshening the clean, optimistic air. Soon, a huge expanse of natural uninhabited land was there in front of us, gently sloping down to the estuary water. From here it's nothing more than a silvery slither seen between tall, long established trees. We stop by a fenced meadow with a horse in it. By a bramble bush with a family of resident tweepy birds. Near a strange house that looks like no other. The sense of sheer openness, was so rejuvenating, we felt we just had to try to capture it. Once fixed to the fence beside the rambling brambles, we left the microphones to capture the landscape, alone. The house, nearby, is called Julie's House. "A house for Essex". Conceived by the artist Grayson Perry, it's a building that serves not just to shelter and protect it's occupants, but to tell a story to those who pass by. What do the skylarks make of it though? Who knows. But their singing does light it up. Light up the house's ramped tiles and sound reflective structures, which as the birds wheel over strongly reflect and amplify their songs. What a thing to discover! A house, that's a sound mirror for skylarks, at the edge of an estuary wilderness.
Sat, July 02, 2022
126 The seawall and the night patrolling curlews (quiet, long, sleep safe)
To be a remote seawall, on a stretch of tidal estuary. To see the days and nights not as periods of time, but as slowly undulating waves. To feel the weight of water, twice rising, twice falling. To hear, the lone patrolling curlews. To stand, firm. To be warmed by the sun, then when it's gone, cooled. To be dried, then submerged. Exposed, then hidden, to thrum with the mindful hummings, of passing ships. And still hear them, the lone patrolling curlews. To be leaning back, shoulder against the great mass of land, there, beneath the open sky. To be brushed by its gentle, onshore wind. And charmed, by its nudging, soft cusping, whisperings. To be flooded, and engorged, then washed, slooched, and released, then lapped, and slooped, and washed, and trickled, and left wetted, soaked and cleaned, by the ebbing tidal water. And all the time, be a fulcrum, on which swing the days and nights, and tides, and weather fronts and seasons, and years and decades, and, centuries? A fulcrum, and a mirror, flat, back leaning and steadfast, off which the echoes reflect. The sparse, echoed callings, of the night patrolling curlews. -------------------------------------- This segment of quiet, detailed time comes from an overnight recording we made last summer in Burnham-on-Crouch. The view from the seawall is straight out over the water, towards Wallasea Island. It's about 2am and a very high tide has just receded, leaving the lower section of the seawall sparkling with watery sound. Birds patrol the night sky. To the right of scene the hum can still be heard of the ship that passed (heard in episode 98), and that is now docked about half a mile upstream.
Sat, June 25, 2022
125 May rain in the Forest of Dean
A band of cloud slowly drifts towards a sunlit clearing, deep in the Forest of Dean. It's morning in late May, and the birds are lighting up the space in sound as brightly as the sun. Wrens. Blackcaps. Song thrush. Over the forest floor, tangled vines warm in the heat. High above the approaching clouds, a jet plane softly rumbles by. Perhaps some of its passengers are dreaming of falling rain, in a cool quiet woodland. We've been scanning for rain, through the 72 hours of audio we recorded last month in the Forest of Dean, because it is always so rejuvenating to listen to. Falling rain, and the aural ambiences that come before and after it, seem to play to our atavistic instincts. Those ancient, ancestral compulsions that reveal that our thirst for water reaches far beyond the mere act of drinking it. Here's what the mics we left alone in the forest captured, from the trunk of an old oak tree beside a hidden clearing, as a shower of fresh May rain passes over. >>Thank you to everyone who donated or bought cards through Ko-fi this week . Every one helps keep Lento on air.
Sat, June 18, 2022
124 Midnight waves by the sea fort at Weymouth (sleep safe)
We've been struggling to sleep in the heat. To help, if you are having the same trouble, we're sharing another segment of cool and quiet from Nothe Fort, Weymouth. Tied high up in a tree, right beside the fort and with a birds-eye sound-view of the water down below, the microphones captured the unique quietness of this place, through the empty night hours, without anyone about. Tide low, and on the turn. Out over the sea, sky, pitch black. A whole landscape, in sound, and almost at rest. Lone cars far away, labour the inclines along the coast road. Surface waves moving, in slowed motion. Swelling, circling, then settling in sympathy to the stone footings of the fort. Painting a picture in crisp clean sound, of its outer shingle boundaries, its under water rock formations. In time, the tide will slowly rise, and a boat, somewhere near, will begin to pull against its moorings.
Sat, June 11, 2022
123 A sound-view from Orcombe Point on the Jurassic coast
Between the stubby trees, a stony path. Shrubs, unusual grasses. Feeling the climb, and the air. For the first time this year it's warmer than skin. Warm moist and still, like the waft that greets you at the greenhouse door. Here, high up the hill (though still below the Geoneedle of Orcombe Point) and looking down from a patch of ground that's formed like a natural balcony. The sea and the crashing waves have melded into a distant pool of steady white noise. Seagulls circle the bright expanse above. Far below, motorbike riders, sandcastle builders, picnicers and their over-excited dogs can be heard enjoying the day, enjoying the place, all mellowed by distance. The balcony position seemed like a good place to record, so we left the mics behind in one of the stubby trees and proceeded up the path to the top. Somewhat surprisingly this coastal land is rich with familiar birdsong. Blackcap, chif chaf, robins, great tits, various types of crow, and of course the ever-reassuring cooing wood pigeons. Given the location and the particular fruitiness of their respective callings, maybe we can treat ourselves to a jolly seaside thought. That they, like us, were also here to enjoy the panoramic sound-view of the sea from Orcombe Point.
Sat, June 04, 2022
122 Forest bathing in the cathedral of trees
We're really happy to be able to share with you this latest piece of captured quiet, fresh from the Forest of Dean. It's a passage of early evening time, from deep in the forest last Saturday. If you're new here, Radio Lento is a bit different to other podcasts. It's all about experiencing the sound-feel of natural places. We've put a few tips on how to get the most from it below*. Each episode presents the authentic sound of time passing from a real place with no interruptions, talking or adverts. It's for anyone wanting something to help clear their head, use in meditation and mindfulness routines. It's also an escape from the noise of daily life - travel through your ears to feel the aural reality of somewhere else. What you hear on this podcast is produced by panoramic microphones carefully placed in natural places, and left alone to record. We hike out to each location with high spec nature mics, then listen back through the huge chunks of audio to pick out the quietest and richest passages of time. After checking the sound is clean and uninterrupted, we upload the segments as new episodes to the podcast feed. Radio Lento combines the ideas of nature and immersive listening, with discovering the real sounds of natural places across England and Wales, and presents them in an easily accessible podcast format. *How to get the most from this podcast: 1. To get the full panoramic detail available in the stereo feed use headphones. Headphones of any type should work, but 'covered ear' designs and those with noise-cancelling will help to reduce external distractions. If you find covered-ear headphones uncomfortable try open-ear design headphones instead which let your ears breathe. 2. The ideal setting for listening is from a comfortable and reasonably still position as each episode is captured from one fixed and steady position. The podcast especially suits those working, reading, resting or doing mindful focusing. 3. Our recordings are taken from natural places and aren't bass-boosted or loudness pumped like other podcasts. Even listening in a quiet place it can take a few minutes for your ears to adjust to the softer sound. But if Radio Lento remains too faint tap up the volume level a few steps. If you listen to a sleep safe episode to get to sleep remember to deactivate your Apps automatic 'play next' option to prevent another podcast starting.
Sat, May 28, 2022
121 On Portland Bill
At the edge of a craggy rock promontory, near the giant lighthouse, there's strong sea wind, and an old rusted crane. Past the collection of weather-beaten fishing huts. Off the footpath. And beyond where the land is safe to walk. The view here, of a panoramic sunlit sea, is both wild and precarious. It urges the venturer to resist reaching down to touch the water. Touch and so connect, with whatever the mysterious energy is, that's powering the dance of the deep water waves. Folly, it says. Step back, it says, and rest upon the old rusted crane. Spend a little time here. Half an hour should do it. Use your ears to read the water. Use time. The pointed shape of this craggy section of rock steers the incoming swell into natural inlets, to the left, and to the right. Wild water slaps and splatters against the worn stone. Gusting sometimes strongly, the onshore breeze swings a loose part on the crane, somewhere above where the microphones are attached, making a delicate metallic chink. Over time, and from some way out to sea, an ocean going vessel slowly, and benevolently, hums by. We captured this segment of time near the lighthouse on Portland Bill last month. Cloudy conditions had persisted through the day but by the time we'd found the right location to record the sky had turned to blue and the sun was shining strongly.
Sat, May 21, 2022
120 Secrets in the spring air - inland coastal country
On the footpath from Winchelsea to Rye (the one that goes inland and round in a long loop) we came across a small copse of trees in the corner of a field, by a heavy metal gate. The spot was surrounded on all sides by fields and pastures. The day was starting to get hot, so under the shade we just stood at the gate, to take in the air. Above the baa-ing of sheep and lambs, and the melodic callings of woodland birds, the trees, tops against the blue sky, were waving slightly in the spring breeze. They stood together, turning the moving air into soft susurating sound. Vague voices seemed to waft from somewhere. Perhaps it was the farm we saw signposted a little further on. It was the space underneath the trees that possessed the most mesmerising feel. The trees seemed to somehow distil the landscape. We set up the mics, then walked on, to let them capture the quiet alone. With us gone, they captured the singing birds, and the insect hum. The grazing sheep and lambs, and two propeller planes, high over, with ocean views of the coast. They caught the cracklings of drying twigs amongst the dense leaf litter, and that strange nameless blur that time makes as it passes in a quiet country place. They witnessed a squirrel too, noisily nosing about on dried broken bark and leaves between the trees, and later jumping through the branches. Quietest of all though, and right at the end, they caught the distant passing calls (extreme right of scene) of a cuckoo. -- Cuckoos are the most fleeting of England's migrant birds spending only about three weeks here to lay their eggs, before flying back to Africa, They never get to see their chicks, but still the young birds once fledged still manage to follow their parent back to the same place in Africa.
Sat, May 14, 2022
119 Dawn chorus in the rain high in the Derbyshire hills
These are the last woods that an ancient track passes through on its rocky way up onto the flanks of Black Hill, Derbyshire. The last woods to catch the spring rains. Walkers, mountain bikers and horse riders bathe in its rich spacious atmosphere before ascending onto the exposed moorland that lies beyond. But there's nobody about now, it's five o'clock in the morning. Glorious emptiness, filled with spring rain and birds. A world that's all theirs, on Dawn Chorus Day 2022. The track fords a stream by a broken down gate mid-right of scene. Normally the stream is an ankle deep torrent but owing to a long dry spell its presence is lighter than usual. The rilling water can still be heard reflected by the countless newly sprouted leaves, that make this wood an intensely green place. The microphones, recording non-stop all night, are attached to the trunk of a tree. Centre of scene is the exact same spot that Carl Fuchs first cellist of the Halle Orchestra and member of the original Brodsky Quartet, wrote about in his memoires*. Whilst digging in the stream two passing walkers enquired of him whether the water was good to drink. After they'd refreshed themselves he overheard one of them say to the other as they trailed away, how helpful the labourer man had been. To be seen by others as not an eminent musician but as the ordinary man he felt himself to be, proved a significant moment in his life. So hear, at this same spot where that exchange took place a century ago, how the stream still flows, a hundred springs on. Time passing, in all its ordinariness, in all it's refreshingly uncluttered and restorative ordinariness. *Musical and other recollections of Carl Fuchs, Cellist. Published 1937, Sherratt and Hughes, St Ann's Press, Manchester.
Sat, May 07, 2022
118 Lullaby sea by Nothe Fort (sleep safe)
It's the dead of night. Everything still. A panoramic stillness, stretching for miles, across this coastal Dorset landscape. The tide's in, and without the chivvying warmth of day to energise it, the sea has calmed. Calmed, and reduced, into gentle, lullaby rhythms. You can feel it ten yards to the left, the sound mirroring presence of the fort. And sense the drop, just a few steps in front, sixty sheer feet or more, down into the water below. With your elbows wedged onto the top stones, peer out. Not with your eyes, with your ears. Peer into the blackness and imagine yourself as night watch. How long can you go before these slow rocking waves rock you to sleep? Don't fight it though. Let yourself instead drift into a state of wakeful rest. An uncluttered form of vigilance, with all attention focused onto the rippling surface of the water. This slowly rocking, lullaby sea is filling and emptying, filling and emptying, in perfect aural detail, along the immense stone footings of this old, long-standing south coast sea fort. ------------------------------------------------------ Nothe Fort was built by the Victorians to protect Portland Harbour and is well worth a visit. With its ramparts, gun decks and underground maze of tunnels the fort is perched at the edge of open tidal water at Weymouth, on the south coast of England. Our warm and special thanks go to Radio Lento supporters Caz and Tymn for the creation of this episode. They suggested this location for an all-night record, and helped us set up and take down the kit. We're looking forward to returning to this area to capture more as soon as we can. If you are wondering how to say Nothe, people from the fort helpfully told us on Twitter than Nothe rhymes with clothe and mauve.
Sat, April 30, 2022
117 Dartmoor birds through white noise mist
Captured only a few weeks ago, this sound landscape is from a place where woodland birds sing through a mist of pristine white noise. A place empty of people. Empty of human made noise. And a place that we never thought we'd be able to get to... A gorge. On the edge of Dartmoor, where trees thick with velvety moss grow on steep banks, knee deep in foliage. Where a torrent of crystal clear water rushes down through stark craggy rocks. A perfect spot, there to be discovered along a footpath that eventually leads up to the Nine Maidens stone circle, and that winds, and loops around boulders, and that narrows and widens and then narrows again, and that often disappears into outcrops of blunt rocks, until eventually it levels off near a wooden bridge. A bridge that's there and waiting for you to cross from this bird rich bath of white noise, onto the ground that slopes up onto the exposed tops of Dartmoor. We left the microphones behind to capture the rich aural essence of it while we walked on. Discovering this remote spot was for us entirely thanks to the recently reopened train service from Exeter to Okehampton. We've made almost every Lento recording on-location and on shank's pony (old speak for travelling on foot, shank meaning leg). We cover the long distances by train and increasingly on rural bus routes. It means almost every location you hear through Radio lento is there for you to get to yourself, and reachable without a car.
Sat, April 23, 2022
116 Sissing plantations in open country
Stopped in our tracks some way along the path from Althorne to North Fambridge, by a sound. Plantations swaying in a gentle wind. The brightness. The softness. And a sound that comes in waves. Siffing, then sissing, then siffing again. Above, on warming thermals, skylarks circle and sing. Beyond, in the far distance, geese and other wild birds call. But these are last year's crops, one of us says, into the unfamiliar warmth of a new spring breeze. Still there? Yes, unusually still there, and still making their own particular sound. A mile-wide sea of dry, wind waivering plants. As the breeze eases, the siffing and sissing subsides into darker tones. Shifting shadows, of last year's golden hues. -------------- We made this 25minute sound photograph of this wild wide open place last weekend on another walk along the River Crouch, this time going from Althorne to Fambridge. Farm machinery can sometimes be heard along with the distant activity of the residents of Althorne (extreme right) a remote hamlet in Essex and home of the Bridgemarsh Marina (episode 36) . ----- ------ ----- Thanks for listening. If you'd like to support Radio Lento, please buy us a coffee or set up a monthly subscription via our >Ko-fi site
Sat, April 16, 2022
115 Coastal city sleeping (sleep safe)
What makes that city noise at night? That strangely non-descript hum. That audible presence that seems to be made of nothing and everything, and comes from nowhere and everywhere, and that is so familiar to us city dwellers. Its origin is uncertain. Probably impossible to pin down. City hum does not exist outside of cities though, so that at least explains something. Perhaps that's its charm. That city hum can't be explained. And so why, like other things that cannot be fully explained, it seems to possess some very valuable properties. Especially to those seeking rest. At night, city hum with its endless lulling flow, seeps in through every window open. Every door ajar. Aural balm, for tired minds. And it greets the garden wonderer, come out to look for stars, with a soft inky black message, that says, welcome, to the night. Welcome, to these tawny roosted hours, watched over by owls. To this other version of the same world, where light shrinks to speckled dots, and all that is, all that is anything, is there to be seen through listening. City hum ebbs and flows. Echoes with night birds, and susurates between countless details across landscape forms. Listening into it, really listening to hear into its depths, can be like counting sheep. Soft city sheep, come to help you listen, come to help you sleep. -------------------------- This is a section of an all night recording we made in Exeter a few days ago. It's in the back garden of a house from 1am. It captures the stillness of the city and two tawny owls against a backdrop of dreamy sounding seagulls. Exeter is in Devon, in the South West of England.
Sat, April 09, 2022
114 Crashing waves at Durdle Door
It's when you've been listening to it for a while, within the gravitational pull of this immense rock promontory, that it starts to make sense. The language of the crashing waves. And how each wave, as it arrives onto the shingle shore, has its own way. Everything that a wave has to say about its long journey over the sea, has to be said upon the moment it lands on the shore. Within those few moments. Those few, tumultuous moments. A whole story in sound. All that it says though is tumbled out through noise. And all jumbled up too, if heard in land time. To hear, properly, what each wave has to say, you have to attune your mind to sea time. Time, as it is in the liquid world. Time that surges and curls and folds and leaps and fizzes into bright white air. Listen forwards, and left and right, and into the near distance, and into the deep distance, and all at the same time. And it'll make sense. What each wave has to say, will be there. Will effortlessly unfurl in front of you. Each wave. Each arriving, with its own, unjumbled story. --- We made this recording last Thursday on the shingle beach looking out onto the stack and arch of Durdle Door on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, England. The name we use today for it dates back over a thousand years, when these crashing waves would have sounded exactly the same.
Sat, April 02, 2022
113 Spring’s here in mild valley
Sheltered against the gnarled trunk of an old holly tree, beside a country lane, the microphones are recording. Or maybe to them, they are looking. Looking out, as they have done for hours, at this mild valley, in sound. From this tree, the valley stretches far and wide. In front is a wide field. It slopes gently down and meets a stony rushing stream. Beyond, and up again across another field, is a farmhouse, partly hidden beneath tall winter worn trees. To the left of the scene, the stream passes into a ravine. Its steep sides reflect and amplify the soft white noise of the flowing water. To the right, animals graze on upland pastures. Here, is up in the Derbyshire hills. A place, that to us city dwellers, may feel like a place to retreat. But this is not all that it is. By visiting it, even through headphones and a bit of time, the meaning of this landscape can be observed, read and understood. The patterns of the wind in the tree. The ways the birds communicate, come and go. The distant murmurs of animals. Things that are heard best, when there is no human presence to interfere. This segment ends with the panoramic sound of passing geese as they fly along the course of the stream to reach the reservoir beyond, where they spend the day.
Sat, March 26, 2022
112 Suffolk Wood (part 12) - 7am to 8am
Radio Lento is 2! Thank you for listening, for supporting, and for the many kind messages. It all started here, in this Suffolk Wood. So to celebrate we return, to hear how time passes within the wood between 7am and 8am. This is episode 112, and the twelfth part of the Suffolk Wood series. It's the penultimate one, with just one more hour from special location to come. It's been and continues to be an absolute pleasure to share the aural records of time passing in many different places, and particularly from this wood, hour to hour, and in all its three dimensional and unedited form. The authentic sound of the landscape unfolding is what Radio Lento is all about. Radio Lento remains a free service providing real sound landscapes in high definition long-form sound. Every recording is made on-location by us and using our own customised equipment. Our approach to sound recording is to intervene as little as possible during the recording and post-production process, leaving the microphones to record alone, so what comes through your headphones is true, like physically being there in that place yourself. It's all based on our thinking that, in this overly designed overly edited speeded-up view of the world, that a free and flowing source giving people the chance to, in solitude, experience time passing in the landscape, is probably now more important than ever. If you can and you are able to >> make a small donation to help us cover the costs of production we'd be extremely grateful.
Sat, March 19, 2022
111 Soundscenes of estuary rain
For this week's episode we head back to the rugged seawall below Burnham-on-Crouch, to witness the sound of summer rain as it falls onto inland tidal water. We've not actually listened back to this audio before, and preparing it has been a labour of love. Labour, because the hundreds of rain drops that hit the lid of our microphone box have had to be individually treated to volume match all the other rain drops! Of love, because each hour we spent doing this, has been another hour spent immersed, within this truly wild and evocative place. And given these troubled times, it's made for some pure and simple escapism that's just so needed. Daylight has come, and from left to right, the pattering of rain melds with the cries of estuary birds. Redshank, gulls, curlew. Tidal flows come and go, swirling and swilling, over the concrete blocks that form the seawall. Distant signs of habitation waft in from the west (hard right of the soundview), while from the east (left), nothing but the natural world. Well almost, there are a few soft passing planes, flying inland from the North Sea. Somewhere high. Somewhere beyond the deep, grey clouds. We were able to capture this passage of time in August last year, by leaving our microphones alone to record from evening, through the night, and into the morning of the next day. When we retrieved the kit, everything was unsurprisingly soaked and wringing wet. Amazingly though, while the electronics inside the box had got wet too, the kit was still recording! We hope the captured sound of time passing beside these wild and open tidal waters may bring you some relief, as it has us, during this difficult and most taxing of times.
Sat, March 12, 2022
110 Rain falls in Banfield Wood
Sky greying. Rain coming. A muddy path under bare trees. This is the wood where we should record. Beneath a buzzard circling, a perfect tree, mid-point within the forest. Mid-point, with a wide and detailed aural view, of boughs moving in the wind, of light sticks shifting, of silent fields sloping up to a green grey horizon. The rain begins. It starts gently, as a fine sifting mist upon the ivy leaves that surround the trunk of this old tree. The tree, an elder, basks in the falling water, creaks in the changing air. On the forest floor the rain falls heavier, is scattered and blown in flurries. Above, banks of wind make passing shapes in the high bare branches. Spring is coming though, and you can tell by the birds. Great tits, long tail tits, a jovial wood pigeon. Between the bands of rain they hop out from their sheltered places, and sing. Their song makes this not a winter wood anymore, but a place filled with the sounds of the approaching vernal equinox. ----------------------- Last weekend we left our microphones alone to make this recording in Banfield Wood, rural Hertfordshire. It is the next wood across the valley from Comb's Wood which featured in episode 104 'While away in winter woodland' which we recorded in December.
Sat, March 05, 2022
109 Here at the river’s edge
Now you're here, unhook the burden, and let it rest upon the wild grass. Walk away. Away from it, and down, onto the rocks. Away, and over the wetted stones, around the weeds that smell of sea, and right up to the river's edge. The rushing edge of the Crouch. Yes that tidal river, that unheard of river that runs like a forgotten dream, across the wilds of the Dengie Peninsula. Here, is your journeys-end. And what you've come for. And now you're here, you can breathe. Breathe, and look about. Breathe, and listen. Take it in. In, all of it. All of this landscape, with its simple, natural, emptiness. This hurrying water. Crystal clear. Crystal clear and spinning, and curling, in wind folded waves. Feel the wind, how it buffets your face. Tugs at your jacket. Hear it, sweeping the waves, this way and that, from left to right, right to left. Wind against tide. A few inches beneath the flowing surface, you see some tiny little trees. Submerged plants, wind-bent in the strong current. You crouch down, reach forward, and dip your hand in. It's another world. A clear translucent world, of pure cold. Fingers wavering, you cradle one of the little trees. It feels like rubber. A tiny, little, rubbery tree. Anchored, and growing almost impossibly, out of the bare river bedrock. It's living. What a wonder of nature, you think. What a wonder of nature, cries a bird. A redshank. Two redshanks, flying directly overhead. With fingers still cradling the tiny plant, you look up. Up at them calling, and as a child again, into the too bright sky. -- We made this recording last Friday at a remote spot on the river Crouch, as it was washed about by extremely strong wind. It's about a mile due east from the Bridgemarsh Marina in Althorn, Essex. The new wind baffles we attached for episode 108 were severely tested. Redshank, distant geese, an overflying seaplane and the train on the line to Southminster can also be heard.
Sat, February 26, 2022
108 Song thrush sings in twilight gales
We were told a song thrush lives up in the wood. The old place on the side of an exposed and remote hill, where sheep are kept in a paddock under the shelter of trees. Tall firs, holly trees, hawthorn and a tangle of thorny briars. For a moment, the pure repeated notes of that ethereal bird, that musical songster of echoing forests, rang out somewhere in our imaginations. Another gale was forecast though, and to try for a recording we'd have to hurry. Our mic box, tattered after months of outdoor use, needed new wind baffles. We quickly cut and pinned fresh squares of fluffy acoustically transparent fabric onto the box. Drawing pins proved the best. Sat at the kitchen table, on one side the wall clock ticked. On the other, flurries of hail rattled against the windows. Real weather was coming. In an hour we were out. Striding up the moor, along its steep stony lane, sleet rained down in freezing waves. It made the widely spaced bars of the cattle grids even more treacherous than usual. The high grassland was waterlogged. Through deep puddled trenches and along the rough track we went. The sky stripes of bright, and grey. Then we reached it, perched on the sloping moor, the dignified shelter of the old wood. The deep hushing space of the wood. The wood where the song thrush lives. ----------------------------------------- We made this recording last week on the flanks of Black Hill in Derbyshire. This segment is from twilight to dark. The mic box was attached to an ancient holly tree covered in a stocking of moss, facing out over the paddock towards banks of tall fir trees. The song thrush did sing as did a robin, which for a short time perches directly above the kit. Sheep briefly baa too. This sound photograph captures the scene, a panoramic movement of fir and holly trees as they absorb the energy of the oncoming gale.
Sat, February 19, 2022
107 Shellness bleak where land meets sea (best heard with time and headphones)
This, is bleak. Wave, weather worn, bleak. Windswept, land end bleak. What we've come for. An exposed area of land that noses out into the North Sea. Its tidal zones are made of bleached dry shells instead of sand. Of saline rotted timbered fences, some sunk waist deep, in time rounded, long shore drifted stones. And of shallow racing waves, blown sideways. This is Shellness, on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent. Dazzled at the water's edge by a low, February sun. Blasted by wind. Too much. So about turn and up the beach you go, through ankle deep shells, to look for shelter. A place found, beside the ramped seawall. A squat concrete block. A Second World War pillbox. Back lent against, and out of the wind. And looking down the coastline at right angles to the rushing waves. At the desolate boundary between land and sea. And slowly, hearing it, as a corridor of emptiness. Nestled within this dim shadow, you can hear how this world is split. to the left, land. Its Swishing grasses. And to the right about a hundred yards, the North Sea. Its constant onshore flow. In time here becomes, not an empty place, but a place where each thing heard, each thing waited for, however slight, is somehow greater, more significant. A sparse few rugged birds. The warm, eventual hum, of a passing propeller plane. And an impression, that the tide might very gradually, be coming in. --- Our grateful thanks go to Ian, who we have connected with on Twitter. He met us off the train and drove us out over an extremely rough track to reach this remote spot. Without Ian, his local knowledge and willingness to sacrifice his car's suspension, we couldn't have made this recording.
Sat, February 12, 2022
106 In time the wren will come - Murmurs of the Kerry Ridgeway
Cold clear water flows, through a dell beneath trees. Hidden behind brambles. A place for the foraging bee. Here, is a place that's miles away. Is a place, steep down beside a country road, that's left alone. Chiffchaff, mistle thrush, pheasant, great tit, rook, wood pigeon, wren. All singing and calling. All free to be themselves in this remote, almost wilderness. It's a mid week morning in April. Another working day for people, just begun. Beneath their few passing cars, behind the brambles, down the dell, the stream flows. Flows on, and flows steadily. An open secret, rich with birdsong, that they'll never get to know. -------------- This section is from a twelve hour unattended recording we made up in the hills of mid Wales in 2019. Human made noise levels are extremely low. At one point a wren perches on the tree where we left the microphones, and sings directly overhead. The stream you hear runs from left to right of the soundview, and down the valley into Ceri, a village in Montgomeryshire, Powys. Listen to other episodes in this series .
Sat, February 05, 2022
105 Boy dog beach fossils
It was last weekend when we made a long train journey out to the North Essex coast, to reach Walton-on-the-Naze. We planned the trip because our maps showed it to be an area out on a limb, and free of major roads. Finding good potential locations for making quiet recordings is very much a main mission for us these days. Quiet is a scarce resource. Long periods of quiet, in wide open landscapes, is even rarer. Scarcer, and even more valuable. Stepping off the train, we could see Felixstowe across the other side of the estuary. As we walked towards the town with a scattering of other just arriveds, our kit bag with the mics sounded noisy. Something inside, perhaps the metal tripod, knocked and rattled. Shifting it about didn't work. On towards the sea. On past the closed off-season shops. And then we realised. It always takes a while for us city dwellers to realise. It's not the bag that's started rattling. It's the quietness of this place! Arriving at the nature reserve, along the stony coastal path, an information board told of the rocks being of the eocene epoch, of yielding sharks teeth and other fossils. The land around us had mostly emptied of human things. So down onto the sand we strode, wind cuffing in our ears, we headed straight to walk along the bottom of the chalk cliffs. It was the sound of a fresh water stream-let that caught our attention. Trickling down the weather-beaten and sea-eroded cliff, forming a small clear pool. A pool surrounded by sand, and by chunks of fallen rock. Chalky, forgiving rocks, some brittle, that break apart within the hand. We played with the rocks and turned to listen to the sea. How the cliff wall mirrored the crashing waves, seemed to emphasise its light blue grey tones. A crisp, bright, wide openness, blended with the contented voices of children, searching for fossils, and couples, walking their dogs. A good place to record. A good place to take this sound photograph of the beachscape, in January, at Walton-on-the-Naze.
Sat, January 29, 2022
104 While away in winter woodland (a clear mind special)
December is a very quiet month for natural sound out here in the walkable wilderness. Wind moaning in the telegraph wires, and rain spattering into flooded puddles. And when you reach them, the woods, down long lanes and a muddy footpath, the song birds haven't yet begun to sing. But stop, qwell the noise of your boots, and listen. Wait.... Let all sense of motion go. A few moments are all that's needed. It comes, more as a feeling than a sound, though it comes from sound. An awareness, of the surrounding wood. The wood as one, huge, still presence. One, huge, reverberant reservoir, of hushing quiet, that has you immersed within it. The wind rises, and falls. The calls of distant birds echo through the voids. Occasionally, the creaking sound, as solid tree trunks bend with the pressure of moving air. The hushing is made as the banks of cold winter wind brush over the high tree tops, and through into the countless boughs and bare branches. Each one, each bough and branch, each one in their thousands, in their millions, generates small trails of invisible, turbulent air. White noise streamers, that shower down, to land on our ears. We hear it, as waves of infinitely spatial hushing. The sound of the whole forest, as it brushes against the wind. This was recorded in Comb's Wood, Hertfordshire in December.
Sat, January 22, 2022
103 Tidal breakers winter beach - in HD sound
How it is, that a winter weekend city walk, can end up like this - by the seaside! How an inner city landscape, with its roads and concrete valleys between misty mid-distance skyscrapers, can be faded from consciousness by simply hopping over one, very long, brick wall. So up and over the flood wall you go, with its curved brick top, and down you drop, not onto but into, something else. Something else entirely. Beach! Yes a beach. A real beach! A wild watery foreshore, with blustery winds, and rushing white horses, and liberating rejuvenating scrunchy shingle under foot. You walk, over the unsteady ground, with a rolling swagger. You walk, right up to the water's edge, right into its bright white noise, its refreshing spray. And everything, from only moments ago, is suddenly forgotten. Forgotten because now you remember. Remember what it is you are living for. This! Children playing amongst bright ringing stones. The thrum of deep channel cruisers. An accidentally discovered beach, beside the Thames, at Rotherhithe. Tidal breakers. Winter beach.
Sat, January 15, 2022
102 Mild valley in June at the Cheshire / Derbyshire border (source of natural white noise)
There is always quiet. Somewhere. All the time great swathes of it do exist. But these, are the farthest from reach. Here though, is some, within reach. Quiet, that from its highest point, is within sight of a major city. Within sight of busy roads. Buried behind nature's natural barriers, this quiet, lies beside a single-track lane. Water flowing along the valley bottom. Fills the air with pleasant noise. Birds, singing out across the steep soft pastures. Mellifluous. Mid-morning voices. To the right a distant farm. To the left, dense woodland at the mouth of a leafy ravine. Ahead, a sleepy farm building, hidden beneath tall dark trees. Over this mild, favourable hour, a lone car passes. It labours up the steeply winding lane, past the tree that holds the microphones, then coasts back down a short while later. A country car. The only one. On country business. This section of audio is from a twelve hour recording we made of time passing in a quiet valley in June last year. We spent some days in the area and made a second overnight recording further down the valley in a different spot. Episode 89 and 78 are taken from the second location. The brook, about 100 yards in front of the microphones, runs left to right across the sound-view, and defines the Cheshire / Derbyshire border.
Sat, January 08, 2022
101 At Benfleet Creek
With Benfleet behind, see ahead the footpath to Leigh-on-Sea. It's a beckoning line to the horizon. But for now, we can just let it go. Let it go because something else beckons. Something sky sized. Breezing in from the flat reflecting water. A presence, that's been there all along. So turn off the path and stride down, down through the thick grass. Head straight to the land water boundary. The ground will soften, and soften again, but keep going. In careful steps, press on through the ankle deep squelch, around the slippery half submerged stones, until the vegetation beneath your feet feels like a semi floating bed of sponge. This, is the last walkable point. The point where you just have to stop, and listen, because the presence of this place has got so strong. In front, is the exposed mud, patterned with trickling remnants of the high tide. Further on, a bright reflected sky. A sky reverberant, with the bending tones of a passing propeller plane. It's the sense of wide, wide open that makes this place so overwhelmingly present. And one might respond to it with an equally strong feeling, an awareness somehow, that what's here and happening outside, is happening inside too. Pure openness. But not emptiness. This place is vast, but not empty. It is filled with fresh blustery winds, and patrolled by tiny, flapping sparks. These are the wild birds. And this, is their world. The tripod sinks deep into the sponge-like vegetation, but finds its place, so we attach the mics and leave them, wrapped in a wind absorbent hat, to record alone. As we climb away, back up the slippery bank, we hear them, the wild birds, coming back to see what it is we left behind.
Sat, January 01, 2022
100 Suffolk Wood (part 11) - a new day
Six strikes St Mary's bell, and it's a new day. A new woodland day, with time returned to normal. The wood pigeons coo it. The cow lows it. The buzzard whistles it and the rooks crow it, from the high tree tops. The cockerel crows it too. A new day, for this wood, just to be. Footsteps? Someone! Steady strides. Wading boot deep into the forest pool, down, and into it through a flood bank of leaves. It's the woodsman, come to tend the forest. Come to clear its tangles and fallen branches. But we think the woodsman's come not just for work, but for a swim. A swim and a bathe in the forest's atmosphere. Its still sense of emptiness, the rippling bands of peace between the trees. Its high vertical walls, of quiet. To mark Radio Lento's 100th episode, we wanted to share this, a special recording. It is the eleventh segment from the twelve hour overnight recording we made of an empty wood in Dedham Vale. Lento began at episode 1 with a 30 minute clip from this same segment, done back then as a test, to see if the whole idea might work. Thanks to everyone who's listened and especially to those who've got in touch to tell us what Lento recordings mean to them. You've inspired us to make these 100 episodes, to keep searching for new places to record, and to develop better methods for capturing the essence of these natural places in detailed, spatial sound. Huge thanks to everyone who has made a donation too . Every pound goes towards the costs of Radio Lento, which is funded by us.
Sat, December 25, 2021
99 High in the hills amongst snow laden trees - Christmas special
We always try to make a recording in the landscape after it's just snowed. It's so quiet. And the quiet is palpable. The effect is unique and wonderful, and is down to the way freshly fallen snow absorbs sound. By absorbing it so well though, there is virtually nothing for the microphones to pick up, and so none of these recordings have ever properly worked. Over Christmas 2014, whilst staying with family up in the hills of Derbyshire, it snowed, and snowed, for days and days. And so we recorded, and recorded, for days and days too. Each time, on playback through headphones, the spatial sense of landscape quiet, the effect we strive to capture in all our recordings, was entirely missing. A few days later, just before ten o'clock at night, the snow began to fall again. The landscape was frozen, after days of freeze thaw. And this time, instead of absorbing sound, the icy snow was reflecting it. As the snow fell, every tiny fragment and particle of it made a sound, in varying degrees from the finest of fine dust, to sounds almost like leaves dropping, to distinctly heavier scattering ice falls. There was a lazy wind in the trees too, moving through as soft murmuring white noise. Occasionally, it was strong enough to push off the lighter accumulations of snow and ice, causing it to fall between the branches, and down onto the frozen ground below. For the first time, the snowy landscape sounded spatial, and the microphones were able to capture the feeling of being out amongst snow laden trees, within a wide open, and frozen landscape. The old clocks can be heard chiming ten inside the house, and towards the end of this unusually short episode for us, far away geese, and foxes too. Merry Christmas everyone! From Radio Lento we wish you and your family a happy and sound new year.
Sat, December 18, 2021
98 A ship that passes in the night - sleep safe
A passing ship, in the night, is like a thought in slow motion. A thought sailing in, from out on the ocean. A thought made of bulk timber upon steel. Made of engine, rudder and wheel. tangible. Omnipotent. But a thought unseen. In perfect dark. In perfect, peninsula darkness. From this place upon the seawall, the nocturnal transit begins, as a warm, pulsating hum. As a low down sound rising slowly, in the east. A vast, timber laden hulk, that to the inflowing tide, feels like nothing more than a drifting feather. To it, a feather adrift. To us, a ship. This soundscape is another excerpt from the twelve hour overnight recording we made last summer in Essex, about seven miles inland from the North Sea along the tidal River Crouch. The mics, which we tied to a seawall railing while we slept in a nearby inn, captured this chance event in total darkness, an event that we feel makes for one of the most compelling listens, of all the river sounds. A passing ship! a ship that comes, and never seems to go. A hum, among the washing waves.
Sat, December 11, 2021
97 Through the trees, distant weir (source of natural white noise - 3D with ear/headphones)
Still air. Quiet parkland. It's 8am, before the people come. Empty paths. Untrodden grass. Mist lifting. On the face of it, nothing is happening. But nothing needs to happen. This is a bright autumnal Sunday morning in late September. To the listener, the scene is panoramic, and one enveloped in another kind of mist. Consistent. Never lifting, never changing. From night to day, from month to month, from year to year, a mist made of sound. A flow of pure and natural white noise, infinitely spatial, present throughout every shadowed space beneath the trees. The weir. Its soft surrounding balm. Lulle Brook is a tributary of the Thames at Cookham, just off the Thames Path National Trail. We heard it from afar, when we first came, long before we knew what it was. A noise on the horizon. A noise with a soft, gravitational pull. In the solitude of the empty parkland, with nobody about, the flowing water instils peace into the air. Widens the sense of space. Throws a canvas on which the birds can paint on their sparse, autumnal calls. Wrens, robins, screeching green parrots, tchacking jackdaws, finches, some distant high passing geese.
Sat, December 04, 2021
96 A blustery day begins on inland tidal water (headphones)
When we set up to record, there were no signs of the weather front. It was late evening. Low tide. We'd followed the path East along the river out of Burnham-on-Crouch and come across a Second World War armament, a pillbox, overgrown and derelict, beside the footpath. A lookout, that now, and for the last seventy years, has looked and been looking out on nothing more than the to and fro of the tides. Further along we saw a railing sloping steeply down the seawall, and into the water. Gripping onto the railing not to slip, we climbed down. In places the seawall was covered in a fine moss, and felt velvety under foot. Where the rough shrubs and grasses gave way to bare concrete, marked the high tide line. The sky had filled with dusk, and we stopped, to listen. It's the sound-check, the audition, before we can commit the kit. A silent minute, that lets us hear the world far beyond ourselves. Slowly, the main flow of the river's outer edge was revealed through countless thousands of swirling eddies. In the mile wide body of air above, the ding ding dings of redshank, the rasping calls of hardy gulls. It was a good, panoramic place to record, and a scene somehow also shaped by not a sound, but an absorbent mass, the low lying effect of Wallasea Island, far off over the opposite bank, with not a light in sight. To make the 12 hour recording, we spent the night in an Inn, half a mile up-river from the microphones. In the dead of night we could hear the yacht masts ringing in the wind, and the rain battering against the window panes, and wondered. What will it be like down at the seawall? Had we gauged the high tide mark right? Will the fluffy hat that we stretched over the kit box stand up to the pelting rain? This is the section of the recording from between 7am and 8am. rain clouds are still passing overhead, their precipitations sifting down like tiny fragments of grit on the rising water, and as it gets heavy, hammering on the lid of the mic box. Seabirds are all around, mainly in the distance, between the gusts of wind, but sometimes they swoop by very close. Someone passes, up early and on foot, with their scampering dog. A few planes traverse, softly reverberating through the full width of the sky above Wallasea Island. The hat that we used to help baffle against the constant esturary wind is by now wringing wet, and the wooden box protecting the kit is too, though luckily not inside. What the mics manage to capture though, despite the drenched state of the equipment, is the essence of this wild landscape around the River Crouch, as another blustery day begins.
Sat, November 27, 2021
95 Suffolk Wood (part 10) - a voyage from dawn to day - spacious and subtle - best with headphones
Day has arrived, and there's no mystery about it. Gone the voids. Gone the echoes. Gone the skewed sense of time, magnified, with distance overlapping. 5am, and it's here and there and all about. The present. The world, re-appeared. Light has come, yet the wood remains still. It's filled with the anodyne reverberations of the distant A12, reflecting off all the hard surfaces of the trees, revealing in sound the huge interior space that is the wood. Don't be beguiled though! These are the grey blue watery minutes, the slack, before the journey really begins. Stand behind the prow, and lean into this, a quiet voyage, from dawn, to day. Slowly, the creatures come. In the leaf litter, they nibble shoots, chase over fallen branches and twisted vines. Gambol around the microphones, as morning children do. They race through the night's re-arrangement of leaves, then stop to bathe in the newness of the wood, re-appeared. Some tiny mammal squeaks, from somewhere near. High in the branches above, the rooks caw, and observe. Maybe they see the cow that lows, in the field beyond. And what about the day? Dressed in the cotton soft coos of wood pigeons, embroidered by the sparkling songs of wrens, buttoned with the bright pips of the littler birds, the day is getting ready. Ready to rise up, and in the blue light, blink. Blink, and lift its shoulders wide, and stretch out its neck, for a touch of the morning sun. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We made this recording back in August 2017, leaving our microphones to record overnight and alone, in a rural wood, off-the-beaten track. This section is from 5am to 6am. Listen to the other episodes from through the night .
Sat, November 20, 2021
94 The trees that wait for the chalk stream to flow (natural source of white noise)
Out of the 240 chalk streams globally, 160 are (or were) in England. For a moment, I thought I heard a splosh and the whip of a fishing rod. But how? Ankle deep in dusty soft leaf litter, several yards down in the waterless bed of a dried up chalk stream, I craned my ears. There it was again. More of a splish, this time, or was it a wish just uttered, by the trees. They swayed in a gust of late summer wind, and I swayed with them. There was someone there. An old man. He was sitting bolt upright on the bank just beside me, with crystal clear water lapping at his leather boots. He was smoking a pipe, and holding a fishing rod. And he was swinging it in, right past my nose, the most beautiful fish I'd ever seen. A dark silvery torpedo shaped body with proud fin, hoisted and shimmering, in the setting sun. A fish! I exclaimed. Aye the old man muttered, from behind his puff of Parson's Pleasure. Just a grayling. It was so beautiful. Where did it come from I said? The wind gusted again in the overhanging trees, and they swayed. Swayed with what this time I knew was a kindly form of long-suffering impatience. Grayling used to live right there, where you are standing now. And many others like them. Mind you, there was a lot more life about when I was around, in those clear flowing waters. Before he and the fish vanished, I saw its iridescent soul rise up, into one of the trees. And I realised there, it will have to stay, leaf like, waiting with its kin, until the chalk stream returns. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We recorded the natural white noise created by these trees a few months ago in the countryside near Newport in Essex. It was a peaceful place, with a tractor tilling a field in the far distance. The trees grew along the banks of what we later found in bygone days used to be a chalk stream. We think of it as a barometer of human impact, and turn to listen to the wisdom of trees. Chalk streams are rare and fascinating. Find out more. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Love Lento? Here's how to support the podcast .
Sat, November 13, 2021
93 Rain garden after dark (sleep safe)
Rain. Rain falling in the night. Falling in the night when there's nobody about to hear it. Falling onto a little ramshackle garden made up of upturned pots, a patch of leaf scattered concrete, and a square of grass surrounded by sleeping shrubs and plants. A little walled garden, basking under the falling water, still, under grey black suburban sky. Sometimes gusted, by a nosy, billowing wind. Does the rain know where it's going to fall? An old tarpaulin hangs beside the raspberry canes. Beneath, a small piece of shelter. A small piece of peace, tapped by the tiny, scattering drops. Does this rain make a sound, when there's nobody around to hear it? We hardly know anything of our garden at night. A few weeks ago we left the Lento microphones there, to find out. Under a waxed hat they recorded the passing hours of the night. City slumber, silk softness, and a band of tranquil, spacious rain. In the morning, it was the raindrops caught on the nasturtium leaves, that told the story of the night.
Sat, November 06, 2021
92 Up in the April hills of mid Wales
Up in the April hills of Wales, beside an empty road. Behind the brambles, down a dell, a stream, over bare stone rolls. What sing you mistle thrush? The inbetween of holly trees, is lit by morning sun. In the field beyond the birches, a thirsty sheep dog runs. Green beach, open sky, scattered lines of sheep shells. Run run, you thirsty dog, the world's your oyster. What sing you mistle thrush? First car of the day, chases emptiness away. Then another in its wake, lest it dare to stay. Their bow waves press the brambles in. Their tyres peel gently by. Their wind sends the dry straw up. It spins. Floats. Then settles down, upon the asphalt, in jumble writing. Sing, sing, you mistle thrush. Sing your mottled, scuttled, song. ---------------------------------------------------------------- This is part of an overnight recording we made in early spring 2019, up in the hills above Kerry, mid Wales. We first thought it featured a spring blackbird, but now know it is a mistle thrush. Chif chaf, wrens, a juddering pheasant, great tits, rooks and wood pigeons can also be heard.
Sat, October 30, 2021
91 When woods go weird
Three years ago we made another overnight recording at the edge of a rural wood. It turned out to be one of those night's when almost nothing stirred, just the faintest susurrations of wind in trees and the occasional crick of a dark bush cricket, hidden amongst the thick brambles that grew around the taught wire fence where we tied the microphones. Nothing happening, for hour upon hour. It seemed it wouldn't make even one episode. But then, just before the gothic bell clanked the half hour before 5am, something in the air changed. The wood, came alive. The change began with a tawny owl, far off to the left, that began to call. It was soon joined by another, replying in an unusually tremulous way. Their strange mid-distance hoots over time were joined by others. Some close, some farther away. Each owl, materialising in its own silent void of the forest, filled the space with what, at times, can almost be said to be an owl chorus. It is often said that everything connects, and so it seems. Whether roused from slumber or in some way spoken to, a cow lows back to the owls from the field beyond the wood. There is a timing to it. It isn't rational, of course, but the interaction is there, all the same, to be heard. Passing geese join too, calling down from their lofty processions, and the ducks laugh back at them, from their murky millpond. It is, in all respects, a weird time, a weird scene, from this wood several miles from the A12 in rural Suffolk. Distant bells clank the hour. The parish clock strikes 5. The dark robe of night is slipping away. The dawn is nigh. Awake you wood pigeons. Fly by you large bird. Buzz you giant insect, sounding like two airborne elastic bands. Hoot, and hoot again, you strange owls. Welcome! The August dawn.
Sat, October 23, 2021
90 Wind on water, night curlews, rain later (sleep safe)
Deep and spaciously detailed night quiet, at the edge of the tidal river Crouch in rural Essex. Wind on water. Rain on water. Night birds over water. Water upon water. A real piece of time, captured from one rainy inclement night in August by a pair of weatherproofed microphones tied to a seawall railing in Burnham-on-Crouch. Over time, and as the weather front rolls in, the delicate shifting movements of the water fill, and become richer and more pronounced. Unperturbed, curlew, redshank and distant geese patrol the black, empty night air. Their calls carry far, in long natural intervals, across the wide open space. It's the waiting, between the calls, that refreshes the mind. Three step listener guide: 1. Ear/headphones enable you to hear the detail and panorama of the captured sound. 2. On a phone or tablet try setting volume in the middle but if you hear nothing nudge volume up, bit by bit, until you feel immersed in the light rippling washes of waves. Not loud, they should feel delicate to start with, because the soundscape is real. 3. Unlike music or speech audio, playing back the detail and space of a naturally recorded soundscape is greatly enhanced, in addition to headphones, when your surroundings are conducive too. It's the listening equivalent of dimming the lights, closing the curtains and settling down to watch an atmospheric film. These are not sound effects, they are all 100% original and natural recordings from real places.
Sat, October 16, 2021
89 The birds of the leafy ravine - a tonic for tired minds (best with headphones)
We're going back to early June this year, to the rich and intermingled singing of birds that happens at dawn throughout the spring and early summer. In Britain it's called the dawn chorus, a behaviour associated with song birds during the breeding season. Captured by a lone pair of microphones tied to a tree, above the watery and precipitous ravine that runs into the infamous Todbrook Reservoir at the Cheshire / Derbyshire border, this segment is from just before four o'clock in the morning. It can be hard to distinguish the different songs, but in amongst the mellifluous tunes there are song thrushes, blackcaps, blackbirds and robins, resonating in the fresh morning air of the ravine. From left to right the watery flow of the stream fills the space, and in the fields beyond, sheep and lambs can be heard. At four minutes some things with hooves, perhaps several small deer, scramble past along the precipitous path about thirty feet below the microphones. One small fleeting drama, on the cusp of a perfect June day. Far out on the right, where the valley opens out into the reservoir, occasional echoes of cars spill over from the country road between Macclesfield and Whaley Bridge. If, from inside their steel boxes, the occupants could have known about the dawn chorus from down in this secret valley, maybe they'd have stopped, turned off their engines, and listened to a phenomenon so few of us ever really get to hear.
Sat, October 09, 2021
88 An afternoon at Wrabness (part 2)
Above the mud silt beach, it's all bright clouds, moving. Then the sun breaks through. The river is stretching wide here, left to right, silently carrying the land's outflow through marshes, and out to sea. Warm wind blows in between long spells of calm. Close by, on the tree holding the microphones, and almost within touching distance, small waxy leaves rustle in the summer breeze. The tide's falling. Wind is pushing against the moored boats opposite and setting them swaying. In jolly colours they rock to and fro, like bath toys, masts knocking, ringing, bell-like. Mid-stream, marine vessels plough comfortably by. As they pass they make slow moving delta waves. V-shaped echoes, that travel along behind, and sideways, expanding, so that eventually, they wash up along the shallow shore, in clean bright, rinsing waves. Gulls over the water. Wood pigeons in the trees. A mistle thrush too, somewhere far out to the left, Sounding something like a blackbird, still just practising his song. This is quiet time, in a place beside wide water. A place, beneath an open sky, that's not sea nor river, but estuary. Tidal, yet calm. Wild, yet sheltered. A place that's good for afternoon people.
Sat, October 02, 2021
87 Sky landing - when the wind bends the trees
They look as if they are swimming in it. The banks of trees. Tense into the current, swaying, twisting in sympathy with the changing wind. Like they're wading out into on-coming waves, wading out to be washed in this force of sky, landing. And in-between, in the tranquil lulls, resting. Tall. Collegiate. Upright. With leaves still trembling. Equinoctial gales, glanced the highland cattle. Or the vernal winds, as the stalwart sheep prefer. A storm of wind that's come to sweep away the dry husks of summer. That's come to redden the leaves. Is it true though? That such thing as an equinoctial gale, is in fact a myth? Myth, roar the trees. A myth, mutter the scattering leaves. You'll have to ask the sky. Now, the autumn air's blowing in. Along wooded moorsides, up and down the country, the season is changing. Time to blow away the cobwebs. To pack a rucksack, flask and tea. To check the map. To put on coats. To catch wiffs of woodsmoke in the air.
Sat, September 25, 2021
Night tide turning at pillbox point (sleep safe)
High tide on the River Crouch. Night. Not a soul about. Small bobbly waves gamboling along the brimming tideline. Playful, in swilling swirls, reaching for one more inch of land, before the ebb. From the east, a lazy wind muffles. Tide turned. The surface has begun to calm. Palmful waves bob over each other in glassy melodious slurps. Their thirst for land is over. Retreat not yet in mind, and still nudging the hard ground, they are letting themselves settle to its dry resistance. Night wind softly presses. The ebb. A grainy hiss of newly exposed land has appeared along the tideline. The water, relaxed, moving slow like a minute hand, is inching back. It's slackened, into tiny, feathery currents. This place is no longer about a shoreline. It's opened. Become panoramic. An aural vista. Wide, silent, tidal river. Far off, murmurs of nocturnal flying curlew, redshank, and geese. And of a low, soporific hum. A ship. In port. Docked, and sleeping.
Sat, September 18, 2021
Afternoon meadow in late summer
Last day of August. Pleasant sunshine, blue sky. Wind 1 to 2 knots, barely noticeable. Standing tall with motionless leaves, the trees are leaning into the warmth, letting their limbs soak up every available ounce of the sun's golden heat. Along the old bridleway, away from the grey noise of a cross-country road, quiet fields are revealed. Knee deep with grass. Waiting to be mown. A hedgerow, beside a field. All around, the air thrums, with a feeling of wide open space. In the mid-distance, a flock of geese, slowly transiting the open sky. From near in a high tree, a rook calls. It echoes over the fields, a dry bark-like caw that spells the arrival of autumn. In the next field, hidden from view behind a line of trees, a tractor pulls a long wheeled and bladed contraption up and down. It's mowing the summer's grass. Time to make hay. An old propeller plane hums proudly over. It's passage draws a slow, arching line, between the eastern and western skies. Gradually, with nobody around, the birds return. Magpies, to bully in the high top branches. The tchack tchacks, of scattering jackdaws. A pheasant, its creaky call like an unoiled gate somewhere in the undergrowth. Little birds, perched amongst the brambles, emit short, percussive sounds. The tractor continues to mow. More planes traverse the sky. And all the time, from everywhere and nowhere, the air continues to thrum with tiny, silken vibrations. These are the traces, the most elemental of aural fragments, the leftovers gathered at the edges of human hearing from the action of countless rolling tyres on fast asphalt roads, but that from here, filtered through so many trees and hedgerows, are safely and forgettably muffled beneath the horizon.
Sat, September 11, 2021
Down at the marina on a weekday in August
Sunlit pontoons. Taut ropes. Empty footways. Still, like a photograph. So many boats moored up, waiting for someone to come down to sail them. This is the marina at Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, where to the eye, on this hot summer day in August, everything looks still. To the ear though, it's a different story. Guy ropes whistle and moan in the wind. Halyards ring against hollow masts. Tidal water swells, and though smooth on the surface, slaps impatiently against the pontoons. And when the wind eases, crickets in the long grass discretely sing. Out on the open water, small craft on small journeys manoeuvre. Mid-stream, a heavy-engined vessel labours against the out-going tide. Docked, distantly opposite the marina, machines relieve a bulk carrier of its consignment of timber. All the sounds of an August working day. At eleven minutes, six, soft edged, evenly spaced booms. Detonations from the firing range seven miles southeast on Foulness. The aural ambience in the air around the marina pushes to, and fro, like the ever-changing water. Filling, then emptying, filling, then emptying, in slow, peaceful transitions. It's the sort of place where one can go to just listen, and take in the atmosphere. A waterside place with sun-warmed railings for leaning into, where everything is there, and everything is happening, but in a more reflective, tide coming in and out, kind of way. Summer beside the marina time.
Sat, September 04, 2021
Suffolk Wood (part 9) - the hour before dawn with owls and nocturnal animals
From over the fields beyond the edge of the forest, the bell of St Mary's strikes 4. Within this empty space between the trees, the golden sound rings pure and clear, though there's no one around to hear it. Soon, the dawn will come. For now, down amongst the leaf litter, the dark bush crickets are still counting the seconds. Still twinkling, like tiny jewels on the velvety dark carpet of peace that stretches out in all directions over the forest floor. Around, nocturnal animals pad lightly in the darkness. Above, traces of a breeze. Of dry twigs and branches dropping. Of the last drifting echoes of night haulage from the distant A12. Across the resonant wood, owls call. Time passes. Then, signalled by one single rasp from a rook, something in the air changes. It's well before sunrise. In the mid-distance, a wood pigeon begins to caw. Are these the internal circadian rhythms of life or have they both seen some kind of light? Perhaps a stratospheric cloud, illuminated by a first shaft of sunlight? Whatever it is, a cockerel crows. The bell strikes 5. The night is over. The day has come. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the 9th episode in our series made from one continuous recording through the night in this special location. You can listen to all previous episodes via this blog post .
Sat, August 28, 2021
82 Hill top oak in strong wind - a natural source of white noise (sleep safe)
High up on an exposed moor, between the Derbyshire towns of Glossop and Buxton, an old oak tree leans into the wind. Its sound is heard only by passing walkers, who from time to time, clink through the gate on their way over the exposed moor. As we passed, we tied the microphones to one of the low boughs, leeside of the strong prevailing wind, and left them alone to record. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Artificial white noise generators designed to promote sleep and relaxation are widely available online and via apps. For anyone trying to steer their mind away from the distractions of the world they provide a stream of wind-like sound, that masks, washes, and soothes. Of course natural noise generators exist everywhere. Unlike their artificial versions, they produce their noise in infinitely varying ways. So much so, that rather than thinking of them as making just noise, they can be thought of more as instruments that enable you to hear the shape of an ever-changing current. Perhaps the most abundant and interesting of natural noise generators, are trees. Evolved as giant plants able to thrive with almost any strength of wind, their leaves, boughs and branches convert even the softest of breezes into perfectly audible sound. Having evolved in and amongst trees, over several millions of years, our listening minds must have been fundamentally influenced by these kinds of sounds. So it must be, that all of us must have and share an intrinsic ability to understand the language of wind in trees. It might also help to explain why listening to white noise of any kind, works as a type of sound therapy. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks for listening to Radio Lento. We make it without any grants, sponsorship or funding. You can help Lento keep going by buying us a coffee on our Ko-fi site or by telling other people about Radio Lento or leaving us a positive review wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.
Sat, August 21, 2021
Rising tide in the rock garden - the sea wall near Bradwell-on-Sea
Stop walking! There's a place to sit. Roll up your jacket to make a cushion and perch on the rocks, just for a moment, to take in the view. Look! Over the expanse of cloud-dappled water, beyond, where the outgoing surge of the river Blackwater swirls into the North Sea, that's Mersea Island. From here, just a sliver of low lying land. A few miles up the coast, though not yet in sight, are the two giant blockhouses of the now decommissioned and quiescent Bradwell nuclear power station built in 1957. Between the cuffing gusts of the onshore breeze, the air here feels unusually still of human noise. Unusually crisp, unusually vibrant with textural sounds. Deep inside clouds and far out over the channel, are some passing rumbles. Not thunder, more like low flying military jets patrolling and underlining some invisible boundary out there, over the sea. Their distant rumblings not only illuminate, through sound, the infinite void of the sky, but bring contrast to the very tiniest, very closest of sounds. Countless fine edged movements, of a sand made of featherlight shells. Shifting and sifting, picked up and dropped, by gentle, inquisitive waves. Somehow, a quarter of an hour has passed. The rock pools between the sunken concrete barges that make up the sea wall, are now filling, and swirling, with the rising tide. Moving back up the rocks, above the high water mark, you find a new place to sit, and watch, as the pools overflow, merge into one another, to become new areas of wide open sea. The planes are gone. The footpath beckons. But you stay for a little while longer, just to listen to the changing sounds of the fast disappearing rock garden.
Sat, August 14, 2021
A doze in the grass on Wallasea Island (High-def sound and sleep safe)
This, is summer island time. Sizzled by crickets, gusted to and fro by hot marshy breezes, a distant marine vessel softly thrums the air with a low soporific hum. Occasional planes pass lazily over. This is Allfleet Marsh on Wallasea island in Essex. East is Foulness and then the North Sea. Down a steep bank from the trail that leads from the car park to School House viewpoint where the River Roach flows into the Crouch, a swath of warm grassland basks under the hot August sun. Sheltered below the ridge, it's quiet, perfect for a doze. A few yards away from the microphones, behind the waist-deep sedge, a tepid inlet reflects glints of the summer sun. It's hot here. Dazzling bright. Invigorated, the bees and hoverflies and countless other insects are hurrying skilfully by. The gusting winds don't affect them. Being early in the afternoon, nothing much is about, except for the sparse calls of a marshland bird. A tumbling chirruping song, fleeting, with a bright yellow timbre. Hidden, but only a little way off, somewhere amongst the tall grass.
Sat, August 07, 2021
Essence of estuary
Plunge off the train and smile at the fresh air of nowhere! This is Thorpe-le-Soken in Essex. All ground and sky. The bell in the driver's cab rings twice, then twice again, and it's off. Next stop, somewhere else. The ensuing feeling of loneliness is only temporary. With the decaying buildings of the old maltings nearby, proceed on foot towards the main road. The brick bridge should be firmly on your right. Don't go under it. Turn left instead and walk along the road for a few minutes, until on the opposite side of the road, you see the entrance to an overgrown footpath. This is the beginning of a country walk, that will eventually lead to the creek. In late summer, it'll be a corridor of deliciously verdant green, busy with butterflies. The aural presence of the B1414 will remain on the left. Follow the natural path all the way to the fast bisecting road, cross and continue along a lane surrounded by open fields until you reach another fast bisecting road. Join and follow, until a private road appears on the right. This is, though not signposted, the official footpath down into the creek. It's a lane that ends in a handful of cottages, and a land that slides away between old timbered groynes, down shallow slipways of vegetated green, into nothing but wild, wide open water. Wind ruffled, low lying and unbelievably silent of human noise, those few miles we covered on shanks pony now feel worth every stride. We set the mics to record on a tripod at the water's edge, sunk part way in the wet spongy mud, tiny bubbles popping, and facing an island some way out into the creek. It was encircled by gulls, ringing redshank and curlews. Tide rising, a wind was beginning to whip up. A weather front was approaching from the south. From some trees farther along, we sat in the grass and watched the rain approach while the mics recorded. Listening, helped by some tea from a flask, It was the sound landscape we'd hoped we'd find. Essence of estuary.
Sat, July 31, 2021
78 The birds that sing on the cusp of night - a leafy ravine in the Peak District (sleep safe after 16 mins)
Early June days, up in the green of the Peak District hills, do not give way easily to night. The birds won't let them. Brimming over with life and song, they sing at the dying light to stay, with all the gusto of dawn. Here above the deep leafy ravine, their mercurial voices can be heard, pouring out into the sheer air, and down, onto the shallow stony river flowing below. The light, for a while, stays. The day, balanced upon the very edge of the horizon, has, with its luminous glow, turned back to catch the last arias of the ravine. As night falls, the last to sing is a robin, the last to fly is a goose. A lone rear-guard bird, filling the dark shrouded void with sparse echoing calls , as it flies back down the valley to join the others, amongst the woodland beside the reservoir beyond. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is part of a 24 hour recording we made last month to capture the sound landscape above the infamous Todbrook reservoir of Whaley Bridge. This spot was just on Cheshire side of the border with Derbyshire, the river a natural border between. We tied our spatial microphones to a tree growing out of the steep banks, about 60 feet above the river that feeds the reservoir with an almost unchanging flow of fresh moorland water. The aural space of the ravine on the transition into night is rarely if ever heard, and makes for a uniquely peaceful soundscape.
Sat, July 24, 2021
77 The cuckoo of Swanscombe Marsh
Swanscombe is one of the last surviving brownfield sites in the Thames Estuary where threatened wildlife can live. On the Kent side of the Thames, to the east of the QEII bridge, opposite Grays on the Essex side, it is an oasis of natural quiet. We took a train and a bus to get there, then walked a sloping path, paved then muddy with the sound of the road dying away. The marsh was full of fascinating life, though empty of people, except for a couple of weekday birders who gave us a wave. Onwards we walked, heading to the UK's tallest pylon, scraping the sky from the very edge of the river. Impossibly high at 600 feet. We hoped it'd hum, or be drizzling so we'd hear it fizz, or windy so we'd hear a whistle, But instead it stood silently in accepting partnership with its sibling on the other side of the river. Though strictly-speaking too quiet to record, we tied the mics onto one of the giant pylon's legs anyway, and left them alone. Listening back, days later, we discovered the mics had captured not only splashes of the lapping Thames and the wide spatial feeling of the place, but also some astonishing and unexpected sounds. Listen and hear the gifts from the marsh. Truly, a magical precious location to be protected. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How many different birds can you hear singing on the marsh? Surprising answers revealed by the winner of the first Radio Lento Golden Lobes quiz see our blog ! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Find out more about the campaign to Save Swanscombe Marshes .
Sat, July 17, 2021
Last pasture before the sea - Winchelsea to Rye
Our first really clear sound-view of the landscape came along a footpath a mile or so from Winchelsea station, with the A259 behind us and, according to the map at least, the open sea ahead. It was in all its peaceful wideness, its pastoral mildness, there to be heard, from inside a little outcrop of blackthorn trees. Every branch covered in the healthiest grey lichen we'd ever seen. Blossom just starting to appear. We named it lichen thicket. The land from Winchelsea to Rye is not only pleasantly low lying and bucolic, but the last before the shingle. We walked it before the summer came through all the new bright green, under a changeable April sky, under the thin calls of distant seagulls and passing geese. Hot sun shone between banks of fast moving cloud. Fresh breezes blew, they smelled at first of luscious hedgerows, then as we got closer, of the salty tidal zone. A see-sawing great tit watched as we set up the microphones. Then as we scuffed away down the stony path, we heard the tumbling song of a chaffinch. Time begins to pass, pushed along by a gentle wind. Some falling drops of honey: a willow warbler. Distant activity on a farm. Yard dogs barking, rooks surveying the ground. Amidst the long quiet, two propeller planes pass, one behind the other.
Sat, July 10, 2021
75 Yacht masts on the estuary at Wrabness (part 1)
We stopped to step over a large brown caterpillar mid-way across the rough brambled footpath. All around us light breezes were sweeping through the high grasses, nettles and reeds. Miles and miles, of wide open estuary land. Then in the distance, amongst the just audible drones of lone cars on winding country roads, we heard the plaintive drooping call of a curlew. The water was close. The map showed we'd converge, ahead about a quarter of a mile. Soft sand blending to mud then water. Gently swirling waves. High tide but on the turn. Pleasantly susurrating woodland and little wooden houses on stilts, some storing beached boats beneath. At the high water mark a gnarled weather-worn tree stands with a panoramic view of the estuary. It leans out precariously, towards the lapping waves, but is sturdy as rock. A good place for the microphones. We leave to brew tea and cook beans for the kids. Yacht masts ring like lonely bells in the light wind. Two walkers stop to pick something up from the muddy sand. Perhaps an oyster shell, there are lots here. Boats squeak and bump reassuringly against their moorings. Two men bob about, fasten ropes, secure decks. Timelessly absorbed in the act of preparing to sail. Everything's settled, between gently lifting banks of estuary wind. From nowhere a blackbird begins to sing. The tide's very gradually going out. The clouds part and a wood pigeon welcomes the arrival of some hot uninterrupted afternoon sun. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks for supporting the podcast. We keep it going without any grants or funding. Every donation however small really helps. You can buy us a coffee or a piece of Lento merch on our Kofi site or support us by spreading the word about Radio Lento or leaving us a positive review wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.
Sat, July 03, 2021
74 Night shallowing in a Suffolk Wood - listen with headphones (sleep safe)
This is part eight, 3am to 4am of the twelve hour Suffolk Wood recording. We made it almost four years ago on a balmy summer night in August by leaving a pair of sensitive microphones spaced out like ears, to record non-stop in the heart of an uninhabited rural wood in Dedham Vale. It was the first overnight recording we ever made, and we had no idea what the microphones would hear. The wood is situated about three miles from the A12. In the evening, when we set things up, the noise of the road was barely audible, but in the dead of night, air cooled and still, the wood becomes transparent to the A12's pale grey drift that illuminates the landscape beyond, like aural moonlight. Close by, between the tree trunks and hidden amongst the ankle-deep leaf litter, are the dark bush crickets. They chirrup pleasantly through the whole night, stridulating their resonant bodies marking out the passage of time in slow, natural seconds. Owls haunt the empty voids, as do other strange and almost unearthly noises. The things we are unused to hearing, the things we may call dream-like. Miniature deer called muntjac inhabit this ground, as do badgers, rabbits and other smaller mammals. Unworried by the microphones they move about with light footsteps on the dry leaves, so close you could almost touch them. A precious sound-view onto their world that our very presence would normally preclude. There are so many surrounding sounds, from bits of dead wood dropping from the tree tops, to distant geese and ducks flying their nocturnal routes. There are also the planes. Passenger planes, possibly also military, emerging as soft rumbles from over the horizon, then passing in lazy arcs overhead, before dissolving away into the world beyond. For them this land below doesn't exist. And just over a mile away, from over the fields, the golden toned bell of St Mary's parish church strikes the hour. Bookends, to the slow passing of time in this peaceful rural wood. ** We've marked this episode *sleep safe* as it is quiet with no louder noises. However, you may find the snuffling of animals and snapping of twigs keeps you awake. So only listen during the day if this the case! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To listen to the other episodes in this series and how the sound of the wood changes over time, visit the Radio Lento blog which lists them all in one handy place. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sat, June 26, 2021
Slow rhythms of the Hoo Peninsula
Several miles up the sun-baked track, along overgrown footpaths and through fields high with meadow grass, lie the watery ditches of the Higham Marshes nature reserve. Nestled within the wide expanse of partly farmed, partly inhabited, but mostly untended land that runs along the lower reaches of the Thames Estuary in Kent. On a barmy summer's day, blown about by a friendly wind, it's a place of retreat and of well tempered quiet. Beside one of the wild ditches, from inside a hawthorn bush at the water's edge, we find a secret space to record. Well defended by thorns, it gently creaks in sympathy with the breeze, but has a birds-ear view of the nearby wildlife and the landscape beyond. The air is cooler beside the water. It rings with the pewit calls of the lapwings. Croaks stretchily with the marsh frogs. Echoes with the gliding yelps of distant geese. At ground level this world is all green and overgrown, but from the air, it must be laced with glints and pools. Bees buzz quickly by and a farmer traverses a field on a quadbike. It's alive with sheep and lambs. Above, skylarks wheel beneath high thrumming planes. From over the horizon, fleeting whines of overtaking motors along a distant country road. These are the slow rhythms of an early summer's day on the Hoo Peninsula.
Sat, June 19, 2021
The tunnel, the towpath and the window - under the M6 at Spaghetti Junction
Set free from its cradled bowl, the smoke from the bargeman's pipe rose straight, into the sky. Lighter than air, the burning vapours knew all-too-well where they wanted to go. Up! And so up they went. Unravelling coils of wisdom, racing towards one small window of blue in the vast ashen sky. Not in your lifetime, nor mine, the bargeman confided between tokes from his short black pipe, but sure as night follows day all of this'll be buried. His prophecy seemed to startle a bird out of a hedgerow, some fifty yards yonder along the towpath. It flapped low over the water before dropping into the scrub opposite. The barge horse, head deep in the thick grass beside the canal, only twitched an ear. Buried? I said, looking up and down the towpath, then up into the vastness of the sky. All of this? More mouthing the words than saying them. The bargeman made an arch with his work-worn hands. Black water, under a metalled sky. The horse tore hungrily at the grass. The bird remained in its refuge. I watched as a curl of smoke lifted towards the patch of piercing blue. The bargeman saw me looking, then slowly let out a gentle smile. If you ask me I reckon they'll have to keep that little window up there. His words made me fix my eye on it. Why will they do that? I whispered. To let the future in, when it comes knocking, he said, pulling up the horse's rope. That's the blue of the world beyond. The one that's tired of all our soot and smoke. Teach the children about the blue, for when it comes knocking. And Never Lock Your Door. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Built in the 1840s, the Tame Valley Canal was covered by the M6 motorway in the 1950s, and then overshadowed by further development of Spaghetti Junction in 1972. When we visited on a bright May day, there were no boats or birds on the water. The cars, motorbikes and lorries, oblivious to the space underneath. Just a few walkers and cyclists joined us in the empty space below the concrete. There, in a dark tunnel under the road, a window onto the sky, placed to let the light and sound from above in. Impossibly placed graffiti on the other side of the canal said in huge letters 'Never Lock Your Door'. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- See photos from this place via our Twitter . Explore other brutal soundscapes .
Sat, June 12, 2021
Wading cows and a passing cuckoo - the lakes and woodland of Chatsworth
Mid-afternoon. June hot. An overgrown track on the Chatsworth Estate, close to the peaceful lakes above the house, between meadows and dense woodland. An abundance of fresh hoof marks. A route used not by people, but by livestock changing fields. Hedgerows scent the quiet air with pollen. Cow parsley, moist nettles, something like aniseed. Nobody is around, so we leave the microphones behind to record, on the trunk of a tree facing straight into the sound vista. Through the tall trees, beneath the loudly singing birds, come the echoes of cows. Knee deep and wading. Splashing and wallowing in the cool shallows. With us gone the true sound of the woodland is revealed. An infinite humming, of bees and countless tinier insects. It can, if we let it, grate with modern taste, but it is a key barometer of life. Humming is a sound-measure of biodiversity, and the louder it is, the healthier the ecosystem. This is a well place. The birds and the insects and the wallowing cows are, with the woodland and the lake, basking in the summer heat. And then, at nine minutes, the thing we never thought could happen... A magic spell. A sonorous rocking call. A simple pair of musical notes, that flow through the air with a special kind of wistful purity. A cuckoo. All-too fleeting. But a cuckoo. Flying.
Sat, June 05, 2021
70 - Blue sky. Empty beach. Low tide.
It's past midday on a late May day in Suffolk and the sun is pouring down onto a calm sea. It's shining, for the first time this year, with that summer strength that makes you stop, to really take in the moment. It's perfect, here at the shoreline, not far from where the River Deben joins the sea, the beaches a mix of shingle and soft sand. Listen. There's no wind. No on-shore breeze. Nothing to cuff the ears or muffle the sound that washes to and fro here at the boundary of low tide. Hear the mesmerisingly detailed and spatial sound which shallow waves make as they break and dissipate. Break, and dissipate. A propeller plane. The grey outline of a container ship on the horizon. Sailing away. Under full steam, out into the North Sea. With each new wave, its grey box-like outline shrinks, and recedes. A giant hulk, no bigger than a fingertip. A few waves more, until it dips out of sight.
Sat, May 29, 2021
Time beside a stream in the Welsh hills
A fair April day has dawned up in the hills above the village of Kerry. Nothing's come or gone yet along the road beside the stream. Nature's curfew means its dew tinted tarmac must stay empty for a little while longer, to let the stream have its say and give the scattered strands of meadow grass a chance to be blown back into the hedgerows. Silently and invisibly to the ear, the road waits, winding down into the valley through woods and open fields, almost all of the way. Intertwined and accompanied by the music of the stream. Up here in the hills, the air is cool and pristine fresh. Soon the morning sun will have lifted away the last of the night's chill. A distant cockerel crows amongst birds in full song. Their sonorous voices ring out over the landscape, pure, unfettered by human noise. One flies down to the stream. Tiny wings beat the air. Then gone, quick as a dart. A short creaky call echoes. A roaming pheasant, sounding like an unoiled garden gate. When near the sheer effort can be heard to judder the air. The stream runs steadily, hidden out of sight along the bottom of a steep brambled gully about ten feet below the level of the road. This section is thickly wooded with weather beaten trees. Far from habitation and almost knee-deep with leaf litter, it's a safe home to birds and ground living wildlife, and a wonderful place to experience the sound of the landscape. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the fourth episode from this lovely spot near the Kerry Ridgeway. Explore them all via this blog post .
Sat, May 22, 2021
Birdsong in rain from inside the derelict chapel at Abney Park nature reserve
There's a special feeling that comes with the sound of falling rain. With a sky still free of jet planes, this is how the day unfolds within the secret space of the derelict chapel of Abney Park. It is first thing in the morning, when the birds begin to sing and the trees change from dark shadow into green. Set within dense woodland in the north east of London, barred and padlocked against vandals, this architecturally significant chapel hollowed out by fire thirty years ago, now stands on the cusp of restoration. It's a dissenting gothic structure that aligns and appreciates the natural landscape, and whose 120 foot spire, still visible above the veteran pines, signifies to all around that below lies an oasis of calm within the city. Since its dereliction, the chapel has witnessed ten thousand dawns. This is just one of them. One glorious section of time captured by a pair of microphones left alone to record inside the chapel, underneath nesting birds.
Sat, May 15, 2021
May rain after daybreak
It must have broken through a mist of spring rain when it came, the dawn, the first light of day. It would have come into a watery sky too, one busy with clouds, but full of blossoming spring and still clean, free of jet planes. The birds will have seen it coming, long before. In fine voice they sing from the mid-distance like in a dream, reflected off so many back garden walls. None in this back garden though, with its wide hanging tarpaulin, tumbled stacks of empty flowerpots, upturned planters, and old paint tins. The timpani, for when the rain drops fall. They know what they're doing, the birds. They watch the rain clouds from their sheltered perches and wait for them to pass. They wait for the water to soak into the grass, and bring up the worms. They bide their time. As they wait, the city hums, quietly. It isn't quite ready yet. The rain showers down, in fine mists and spray. It falls between the birdsong onto the tarpaulin, onto the upturned pots, the countless leaves and blades of grass. And as it lands, it lights up the garden, in sound. Plays upon the upturned pots and tins, taps like a million fingertips on the tarpaulin, gathers, then with a lifting wind streams off onto the yard floor in splatters. This is how a little garden sounds at dawn, when the rain falls. When there's no one around to hear it. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like this episode? Please give us a like, review or share wherever you get your podcasts or on Twitter . You can also support us on Ko-fi to help us keep going - buy lovely cards or buy us a coffee. Thanks for listening.
Sat, May 08, 2021
Listening to the longshore drift
There's a point along the promenade at Bexhill-on-Sea where the pull of the crashing waves outweighs the ice cream hubbub underneath the pavilion. Where no matter your age, you'll find yourself leap from the walkway and begin the short steep shingle scrunching journey down towards the sea. It's a point, buffeted by a salt-scented onshore breeze, that has no need for sign or marker. No need for a call or shout. A turn-off, from the flat walkway, where you simply follow the invisible tracks of everyone who's ever been, and fall headlong into your own childhood dream. We saw in the distance a man walking across the beach with his child, a kite bobbing in the sky in front of them. We jumped down. We strode in giant steps steep down the shingle. We followed the old wooden groyne and stopped when it stopped, at the water's edge, beside the foam fizzing waves. Standing so near to the surf zone we could feel it. The weight of the sea. Thudding the shingle through our feet. How can anything matter in the face of such weight and movement? We could hear the waves rolling in, interlacing, unfurling and breaking. Swooshing in from left to right, pushed by force of current and prevailing wind. This is the sound of longshore drift. The reason the beach is bisected by groynes. We listened, and marvelled, at the gloriousness of the waves as they raced up the beach to meet us.
Sat, May 01, 2021
65 Songs from the churchyard of St Mary’s Gilston
The parish church of St Mary, Gilston in Hertfordshire dates from the 13th century. It is set within wide open farmland north of Harlow. It's one of only a handful of buildings, surrounded on all sides by fields and outcrops of old trees, left behind from when the land was cleared for farming. As we walked along the narrow lane away from Eastwick, thickly verged and wafting with spring flowers, we listened as the noise from the A414 gradually subsided behind us, and dwindled with each turn in the lane, until at last it was nothing. It was then that we felt real quiet, and heard the skylarks. High and rising over the fields, slowly circling on the warm updrafts. Singing out that from up there they could see whole fields of yellow. The porch entrance to St Mary's has two wooden benches. A stack of second-hand books, parish notices pinned to the board, warnings to would-be heritage thieves, dog bowls full of water for passing pooches and a box of hand-drawn pathway maps, free to take away. It is the perfect spot to stop and take in the atmosphere. The sound of a sleepy rural church, adorned with sedately cooing wood pigeons basking on its sun warmed slates. The sound of the overgrown churchyard with its gravestones surrounded by a carpet of cowslips, looking up to be read. Chaffinches and seesawing great tits in full voice from all over, hidden in the hedgerows. At the far end of the churchyard, just before the fields start, a fir tree sways in the breeze. Jovial. Breathing in the wind. Home to a gloriously country-toned blackbird, who flew back to sing for a while.
Sat, April 24, 2021
Waiting for skylarks at the Rye Harbour nature reserve
If I sit here, very still, so as not to scare the water birds, might they come back? I hope so. They've wheeled away again, like they do. It's their drifting altitudinous song that I most want to hear. Sparse clouds are hurrying by. When the sun is out, it's surprisingly strong. It makes the air smell of warm grass. A sea breeze is blowing. Swishing in, from left to right through the tall stems. This spot is only a few hundred yards from the crashing waves of the sea, but a steep shingle ridge softens the sound into almost nothing. It's quiet. Birds are all around, mostly in the mid-distance. A wader that's been sploshing along the shallow edge searching for food has come closer. It seems unperturbed. Does it know I'm here? As I wonder I start to hear them. It is them. They're coming. The skylarks are wheeling back, beginning to unfurl their cornfield-yellow string of audible bunting across the sky above me once again. I drink their sound in. The simple timeless beauty of them. My body eases into a state of complete rest. From somewhere behind, on a track that bisects the nature reserve a car bumps slowly by. A minute later a heavy truck follows. Clanking metalwork over deep ruts. It sounds like it's out of a film set in the Australian Outback. It stops, turns around, then clanks back off into the distance, the way it came. As it goes it draws a long and dusty spatial line across the sound landscape, reminding me this is a vast land, on the edge. The skylarks continue to wheel. Two geese fly by. A migrating swallow makes landfall. ------- Follow us on Twitter to see more pictures from this special place.
Sat, April 17, 2021
Taking forty winks at the seaside - Norman's Bay, East Sussex (sleep safe)
The perfect spot for a snooze on a windy beach is the leeside of a shingle berm. Sheltered from the onshore breeze, you can't see over to the sea, but you can hear it, with all its wholesome sound. You can feel it too. The vast gravitational swell, the ever alternating push and tow. It's why the sea changes the rules of everything. Even time. Just below the crest of the berm, the roar of the breakers is quelled. Cushioned into comforting rumbles, topped with white swishes. Basking in this safe and soporific place, there's no need for words. No need to think, plan, or worry. For this little bit of timeless time, it's just you, the berm, and the sea. Families crunch by over the shingle, their voices lost in wind. Time passes. A loose shell tinkles. Towards the end, water from the advancing breakers can be heard trickling through the berm. A propeller plane gently flies over. It's heading west, towards Eastbourne. This is a sleep safe episode. There are no loud or unexpected noises. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Shingle beaches form steep ridges called berms. They show the lines of the high tide and the storm tides. Explore more soothing episodes from beside the sea .
Sat, April 10, 2021
Mistle thrush sings amongst wind hushing conifers
The air above Broxbourne Wood is moving steadily, pushed along by an early April wind. It's catching the tops of the tall brush-like conifers abundant in this part of the wood. They're all about, and pointing up into the sky, and all hushing, in slow, sympathetic waves. It's a therapeutic sound that helps to open the lungs, and ease the mind. Down here on the forest floor it's quiet. Just the fleeting voices of children playing somewhere else deeper in the wood. A bumble bee comes, then goes, and there's a mistle thrush. A mistle thrush whose jaunty song echoes throughout the vast empty space beneath the trees. It's like a blackbird, but sings in shorter form, and has a lighter, more effervescent voice. For us the mistle thrush spells the joyful arrival of spring. We love to hear it this time of year. It's a bright afternoon. The clouds have thinned almost to nothing and the sun is about to come out. Time for a flask of tea. We attach the microphones to the trunk of a tree and leave them alone to capture the beautiful ambience of this rural Hertfordshire wood.
Sat, April 03, 2021
A city at low tide (sleep safe)
It is said that cities never sleep, but from inside north east London's Abney Park nature reserve, the silken hum tells a different story. It's the early hours of Christmas Day 2020. The park has long since closed. Nothing is about. From part way up the trunk of one of the many ivy-clad trees, the microphones are recording. Capturing the murmurations of the city at night. The traffic has retreated. The torrents of noise have shallowed. An urban sprawl that's gone out to the horizon. This is the sound of the city at low tide. The indeterminable rumble has thinned, to a soft hum. A panoramic hum that shifts, and billows, like curtains of audible silk. It's sometimes lost amongst the hiss and rustle of the ivy. A fox barks. An undulating tone fades in and out. Somewhere off, an unsteady bough squeaks, like a rusty garden gate. Lone cars pass in long hushing waves. Near to the microphones ivy leaves rustle. Then, is that something singing from through the leaf bare trees? Is it a silvery glimpse of dawn? It is a robin. But it's only dreaming. Dreaming out loud, of tomorrow's song. Explore our other episodes recorded from Abney Park .
Sat, March 27, 2021
Soundscenes of spring from the Derbyshire hills
Nestled between high gritstone walls, just off a single track lane about 1000 feet up in the Derbyshire hills, there's an old farmhouse with a chicken coop. Hidden under tall trees it has a panoramic view over the valley. On an early April day in 2018 when the barometer was high, when a blue sky stretched over and the air had that invigorating sniff of rain-washed agricultural land, we left the microphones in an elderly apple tree to record the sheep, the birds and the valley for a few hours. The tree was one of a pair that have stood there opposite the farmhouse for perhaps half a century or more. They stand like an admiring couple, taking in the view. From this beautiful spot they must have witnessed fifty springs, and thousands of new born lambs. These soundscenes feature hens and a cockerel, cows, sheep and lambs. Assorted garden and moorland birds assemble - chaffinches, jackdaws, rooks and robins, blackbirds, black caps and a pheasant. This is also the sound of the sky as we knew it pre-lockdown. Threaded with aircraft, including some long humming lazy propellers. We hope we can get back soon after restrictions are lifted to re-record this soundscape. **This is our 60th episode and marks our first birthday. We launched in lockdown on 29 March 2020 and have been sharing weekly sound postcards to work or rest to ever since. Please help us keep going. Buy us a coffee and / or get some lovely Lento cards to brighten your day or someone else's. Support Radio Lento on Ko-fi . Thanks for listening. **
Sat, March 20, 2021
A fallen tree on Galley Hill
It was, from a bridleway in rural Essex, the long slanted beam that first attracted us over for a better look. A fallen tree, perpendicular to the rest, lying half in and half out of a patch of woodland. We'd been trudging over claggy footpaths for an hour and it was coming on to rain. We needed to stop moving, and properly take in the landscape. The beam formed a natural bench, and something to climb on. After our ears had adjusted, we realised much of the human noise in the landscape was gone. The M25 to the south, and a road called the Crooked Mile which separates the edge of the Lee Valley Park and open country, had both sunk below the horizon. This spot was an oasis for listening. A place to enjoy the early spring sound of the local wildlife, and the rising and falling of the wind in the trees. Leaving the microphones behind on the tree trunk to record for a while, we went back to the bridleway, just to see where it went.
Sat, March 13, 2021
Suffolk Wood (part 7) 2am - counting the chirps of a dark bush cricket (sleep safe)
When the bell of St Mary's strikes 2am, and the world has dissolved into shadows and echoes of far away things, there's a solace to be found in counting the chirps of a dark bush cricket. When all that is near is a loose twig falling, a small mammal, biding its time between a fleeting moment of stealth, and the semblance of a nocturnal breeze seems to be somewhere around, high up in the trees, there is a reason to let go of the urge to track time. Let the night planes take it. Let them draw it away in their soft rumbling arcs, away and over the dark curve of the Earth. And don't worry. They'll be sure to leave it where you can find it. It'll be there when you arrive. There on the cusp of dawn. Here, in this rural Suffolk wood, in this safe and empty place, on this calm August night when thoughts can be let go to float down into the leaves, its the trees who'll stand over. This is a very very quiet episode. An hour of stillness and peace. It is sleep safe. Listen with headphones to get the full sound. This is the seventh episode from this lovely location. Here's a blog post about Suffolk Wood which lists them all, so you can listen in order and hear how the sound of one night changes.
Sat, March 06, 2021
Seaside brutalism - at the Port of Felixstowe
On the beach, sat within wetting distance of the water's edge, there's a point where the noise from the container port begins to meld in with the shingle soft washing to and fro of the waves. Here, about a quarter of a mile away, towering gantry cranes can be seen whining backwards and forwards, deftly hoisting lorry-sized containers like little matchboxes from an impossibly vast supership. Venus, mega-sized, operated by China Shipping Container Lines, and with a warehouse-sized engine and chimney that throbs and pulsates the sea air for miles around. On this, a weekday last summer, the port and all of its rumblings form nothing more than a backdrop to what beaches are really for. Playing. Oblivious children constantly on the move run soaked and delighted to their families before rushing back to get ankle-deep in the waves again. Parents warn there's a stranded jellyfish, while claxons and two-tone sirens announce the peril of yet another swooping crane, on the horizon. There's a jagged beauty to all of this, a form of shoreline brutalism. It is quieter up coast, around Languard Point and past Felixstowe town, where we also recorded that summer. You can hear these soundscapes in episodes 25 (Cooling off beside sifting waves at Felixstowe Ferry - 32mins) and 33 (Champagne shingle on Felixstowe beach - 19mins). If you like brutalist soundscapes , we have more for you to explore.
Sat, February 27, 2021
56 The whispering trees of Bayford Wood
It was our first visit to Bayford Wood. A country walk, on a bright July day which was not quite as warm as it should be. A walk under an undecided sky, from time-to-time enhanced with inexplicable flurries of raindrops that fell like scattering beads. As we followed the track deeper into the woods, surrounded by tall trees, long growing and cathedral high, a small propeller plane buzzed over. It made us look. Then, with the quiet returned, our ears became tuned to the presence of countless myriad things high above us. Whispering things, hissing things, softly shushing things, filtering down their fine gossamer sounds in slow undulating waves. Lung easing. Chest expanding. Mind cleansing. All from up in the vaulted ceiling of green, forty feet above, millions upon millions of leaves, set in tiny individual motions by the breeze. We found a grassy bank set back from the track, pushed through a hedge of ivy, and left the microphones alone to record while we went off to brew tea on a camping stove.
Sat, February 20, 2021
Light rain beside the lane near Sandy
It's all woods and rolling fields in rural Bedfordshire. Good for long walks under wide skies. A chance to get away from it all. On a wet February day, after splashing along muddy lanes and mud sliding footpaths, after passing a pair of Anderson shelters either side of an empty and waterlogged field, we saw a tumbledown wall cloaked in moss. Behind the wall, tucked down in a shallow dell, so quiet it hardly reached us, the melodious sound of a running winterbourne. Watery places always seem to cast a magic spell. So we climbed through the spiky trees peppered with lichen and left the microphones to record. It felt like a long forgotten spot, set back from people and the Iron Age track. When they were sure we had gone, tiny birds returned to flit about, distant cows lowed as the rain gently sifted down through the bare branches. A silvery sounding place, cool, and clean of clutter. In a few months the leaves will come, the fields will dry, and the landscape will sound of spring. New this week! **Please help us keep Lento going. Buy us a coffee and / or get some lovely Lento cards to brighten your day or someone else's. Support Radio Lento on Ko-fi . **
Sat, February 13, 2021
Sound-scenes of Norman's Pond as dusk turns to night - sleep safe
Dusk. The gates of the Lee Valley Park are shut. The people are gone. The miles of footpaths are empty, save for crossing ducks. Beside Norman's Pond, hidden in the scrub, the dark bush crickets have begun. Gulls cry out. On tepid summer water, swans are swimming, slow under the gathering shadows, drippling the mirror-still surface for food. Their calls bounce and echo across the empty lake. Melding with the sound of passing trains. With the tidal flow of the A10, London's artery into rural Hertfordshire. Nightfall. The waterbirds are asleep. The shadows have gone. The lake is inky black. But hooting the commencement of real dark, of the real night, hear, the first owls. Through the scrub, the crickets have sharpened their messages. And at the very edge of the water, something very small scratches at something. Delicately, with the patience of an invisible thing. Dead of night. Emerging like a squeaky toy jumping through carpets of leaves, a creature on the run, or on the hop. It comes, and goes, right past the microphones dissolving into wherever. Owls hoot in the high treetops opposite, and some waterbirds have woken up again, now the air has cooled. It's shifted. Now there's a wind. The A10 sounds to the right of the horizon, and the undulating hum of the power station beyond the bird hide can easily be heard. A floating sine wave, the subtle underflow of our civilisation. Occasionally things splash into the water, and call out over the lake. Dry hanging leaves rustle in sympathy with the passing breezes. This is peace in the Lee Valley. Edgeland peace. A peace formed out of calm rather than absence. Tranquillity, not from being away from human things, but beside them when they are at ease.
Sat, February 06, 2021
After the dawn chorus in the Forest of Dean
There is a time when thin light broadens into day, when the sun is properly up and warm and every diurnal creature is settling into its daily rhythm. A time when the delicate trickles of the night stream can no longer be heard as the ambient sound within the forest has grown into a mellifluous hum, made up of birdsong, gentle wind, and of buzzing bees. It's the time before most people are awake, where all natural things are up and weaving themselves back into their world, threading their strands of aural colour through each and every tree, each and every tangled vine. An early corner of the day most often unheard. This episode, discovered in our archive due to ongoing lockdown restrictions, is the forest in late May 2019, just before 6am. Other parts of this same all-night recording can be heard in episodes 17, 30 and 38 (visit our blog for links to them all) . We made this recording by leaving a pair of rain-proofed microphones hooked up to a field recorder on a long-life battery, hidden up against the trunk of an ancient oak tree, in a remote clearing inaccessible to people.
Sat, January 30, 2021
52 The balm of warm woodland in late summer
Locked-down and nowhere to go. With pounded pavements all pounded, and back gardens beleaguered under pallid skies so dull sodden with wet, it's hard to remember the feeling of travelling out of London to walk free through a forest in barmy summer heat. It feels important to think of it now though. More than ever. Really think of it. Reawaken it. The experience of a late summer walk through the Bayford Pinetum in Hertfordshire. A day when the air was so warm to the skin that it disappeared, leaving one freer to move. And of all the other sensations. Of twisting along endless paths under trees. Of quietly and rhythmically stepping over dry leaves, between ruts in the ground, over fallen branches. Of an ankle caught by a bramble and a hand out to steady against a tree trunk. And an ear brushed by a leaf and a fleeing insect. And walking so unlike in a city, with head swung side to side to better smell the light perfumes. And to let the ears sponge up the atmosphere, the susurrating trees, the birdsong. The way birdsong echoes. The way their calls reveal the long spaces beyond what can be seen. The way muntjac deer bark like lost dogs. The way robins seem to sound sweeter the later in the year they sing. And remembering all of these experiences through a recording we made on that day. This is a different spatial audio recording to the one that we used for episode 31 . We made it as a fall-back, using a parallel set of mics positioned about 200 yards from the main pair. They picked up a completely different perspective of the Pinetum, with so many layers to hear. The trains gliding through the railway cutting sound wonderfully spatial reflected down from the tree canopy. There are more active birds compared from this angle too and a startlingly lovely buzzard.
Sat, January 23, 2021
Garden birds under a silent sky
Every year, on or near the 4th of April, we leave the microphones out in the back garden to record the dawn chorus. It's a simple ritual, partly to mark the beginning of a new season, and partly to compare how the dawn chorus sounds now compared to last year. Despite us living in Hackney in the North East of London, where the buildings and roads don't change much, the soundscape from year to year does. It's always different. We've been making these recordings for 12 years and, not surprisingly, last year saw the most dramatic change. London was in its first lockdown. The schools were closed, the roads mostly empty, reduced to a fraction of the normal traffic. And the skies had fallen silent. No more planes chasing the tail of another, minute by minute. As the day dawned and the sky lightened, the gardens behind the terraced houses woke to high circling seagulls and silky soft birdsong. Unimaginable, impossible in any other year. Gone the rumble and whining of jet engines, gone the rattling bumps of cars on speed bumps. Gone the heavy grey noise, the aural fog that coagulates the air. Instead see-sawing great tits, echoing, crisp and pure. The jovial cooing of wood pigeons. The cawing of rooks. Some screeching green parrots on a mission to get somewhere else fast, and little delicate chittering birds commuting from roof to roof. And like an operatic performer, like a musical instrument perched in a tree, the most totemic of garden birds began to sing its song. Melodious. Perfectly clear. Wonderfully inventive. Inflecting notes of cheer and even glee, as it embarks upon its journey into spring. A blackbird. ** Share the essence of spring. Now available as a sound card on our Ko-fi shop. **
Sat, January 16, 2021
50 Singing beck below Black Hill (sleep safe)
High on a Derbyshire moor below the summit of Black Hill, between Disley and Whaley Bridge, there's an ancient trackway. It runs almost level across boggy ground with views over rough pastures and gritstone walls to a lone standing stone. After about half a mile the track descends sharply into a tree-lined dell. Nestled in amongst a wood, there's a small farmhouse mostly hidden from view. It was, more than a lifetime ago, in 1898 the home of Carl Fuchs, a distinguished cellist, who played in the Halle Orchestra and the Brodsky quartet. At the point where the gorse bushes are, where the path narrows and sinks below the gritstone walls, and the deep ruts get deeper, the traveller hears water. A babbling beck, waiting to cast its spell. A sonorous moorside stream that has to be forded, on tip toe, over exposed rocks. In his memoir, Carl Fuchs when working in the stream, once told travellers that the water was safe to drink. Clear, and from the mountain. Being within a natural cutting, overgrown with straggly trees, its sound is amplified. Shaped by the action of water over rocks, and conducted by gravity, the beck rills the air, as it has for centuries. The deep rocky pool into which the water tumbles, sings watery notes. Colourful, resonant, vibrant. We pushed through the undergrowth and left the microphones to record overnight, downstream of the pool. Time passes. Tiny flurries of rain fall onto the sheltering leaves. The beck flows mellifluously, down and away into the wide open valley to the right. The vastness is sometimes revealed by a passing plane, or a car on a distant road. The birds are asleep. Nocturnal things hold their silence. The beck casts its spell.
Sat, January 09, 2021
Suffolk Wood (part 6) - 1am to 2am sleep safe with owls
All is still in the wood. It is mid-way through a barmy August night. There is no breeze to rustle the trees. Dark bush crickets trichit the passage of time on crickle-dry carpets of leaves. Carried clear over the surrounding fields, the bell of Saint Mary's church chimes one. It's this time, in between the small hours, when the landscape is farthest from light, that the balance between what is near and what is distant shifts and blurs. Cows low. Geese and ducks fly high overhead. The nocturnal noise of the distant A12 has thinned, become a panoramic drape around the wood sharpening what's heard within. Echoes. Of owls. Far off. They're on the other side. Dead branches drop. Thump the hollow ground from where a hidden creature silently emerges to nibble at leaves. Then, they come. The Tawnies. A male and a female, maybe more. They land on high treetop boughs. Cast trembling calls. Haunt the breezeless voids. Time passes. The wood rests. The clock strikes 2. This episode is now available as one of our unique sound cards . Keep one yourself as a momento of this episode or share with someone who might like it. All your contributions through Ko-fi help keep Lento on the air.
Sat, January 02, 2021
Abney Park on Christmas Day in the morning
Through the bare limbed trees of Abney Park nature reserve in Hackney, London a song thrush sings sweetly. It's first light. The air and the microphones are frozen, left behind through a long night and its icy winds. Ivy hangs still, above the lion on the tomb. Abney Park is both a nature reserve and one of London's 'Magnificent Seven' cemeteries. It's early, silky quiet. The park hasn't opened yet. The derelict chapel is an angular shadow beneath leafless trees. Footpaths lie empty, gravestones unread. Everything's waiting for the people to appear. Bathed in the soft city rumble, the softest it can be, the rooks see the light and caw from the treetops. Wood pigeons wake up. Robins stationed on branches one, two, three, brightly twistle strong melodies, mark their territories, all puffed up against the cold. Seagulls wheel in the wide open above the wood, and a sparse few planes rumble by, long haulers coming in, they must be, this being Christmas Day. With the gathering light comes the dazzling spacious song of wrens. A woodpecker. A fleeting murmur of passing geese. A hint of a breeze, a moment of shift in the ivy. And then of alerting birds and far off the sounds of people, a family, happy children and their dog. The first in. The first through the gate. The first to breathe the pure crisp air of Abney Park, on this fast brightening Christmas Day of 2020. [This episode was produced in collaboration with the Abney Park Cemetery Trust.]
Sat, December 26, 2020
Quiet field by Young Wood
It took several miles, over claggy east Hertfordshire footpaths and a waterlogged bridleway, to find a quiet field. A peaceful spot where the susurrations of the natural landscape outweigh that of the distant A10. To break our winter walk, we came off the bridleway and followed a babbling brook into a spindly thicket, where we left the microphones alone to record. The water's running steady. Rilling over dark stones, flowing in and out of small pools hidden under grass, from where a bit of bobbing wood spins and softly knocks. Above small birds flutter and chitter in the leafless trees and far off, seagulls. An old Land Rover splashes its way down the empty puddled lane. A lofty buzzard circles and droops its whistling call high over the nearby wood. Behind tails of wood smoke, jagged shapes of crows, leap and caw between the trees. Somewhere deep in Young Wood, a pheasant creaks. It's waiting for the dusk.
Sat, December 19, 2020
Derbyshire gales blow away the cobwebs
It is one of those bright-skied days when the clouds are moving faster than they should and you can hear the weight of the trees. A gale is sweeping the moorside, clearing down the dead wood. Sheltered inside an outcrop of trees, everything's in motion. What's loose is up and swirling, what's tethered bobs and waves. Banks of wind surge, roaring through the high treetops, bending hundred ton trunks that in turn lean, and straighten. Eddies are whirling down through the foliage, lifting tangled vines and rustling crisp leaves. Beyond the wood, sheep stoically graze, knee-deep in green grass. They're overseen by the cockerel crowing hard to be heard. Chickens poke and cluck over the rough ground by the farmhouse. Its roof appears and disappears behind rocking boughs. A tractor chugs by on the lane, its smoke dragged out flat from the chimney. Birds come and go, twittering and calling, unperturbed by the wind. Hill walkers clink a distant gate. Time to take it all in. To fill one's lungs and let a Derbyshire gale blow away the cobwebs.
Sat, December 12, 2020
Night rain falls on a Peak District moorside (part 2 - sleep safe)
It's the early hours of the morning. Shrouded under dark sky and cloud, the rain's falling heavily on the moor above the Whaley Bridge reservoir. It's dowsing the trees in this small wood, pouring and scattering through the waxy June leaves, filling the air with a springly spray of refreshing sound. The sheep and the lambs are asleep. The farmhouse over the field is a murky shadow beneath a haze of yesterday's wood smoke. The cockerel, the chickens and the dogs are silent. Only owls are there, somewhere in the inky dark, far echoes from another wood. It's a Derbyshire landscape, all hills and fields with gritstone walls and slopes that end in valleys. Time passes. The rain falls. And as it slowly eases to a patter and the last jets have ploughed their lazy ways down into Ringway airport, the owl comes close. Almost incredibly to a tree near where we left the microphones. A tawny owl, calling for its mate. It just appears. Its wings make no sound.
Sat, December 05, 2020
Bucolic contrasts under low cloud - the land between Sandy and St Neots
Tingling droplets still hanging in the air from the clearing mist, with not much daylight left, we finally managed to find a place to record. A lonely outcrop of oak trees beside the trackway, with a clear view of the surrounding landscape. Magpies circling. The spot had an interesting feel to it. We found later that the track dated back to the Iron Age and then became a roman road. Half a mile back down the track we stumbled upon a long overgrown airfield, a barn in a cluster of trees containing a memorial to the people stationed there. During WWII it was known as RAF Tempsford. Covert missions were deployed into occupied France. Now, from this little outcrop of trees, the air is ringing under low cloud with the sounds of today's bucolic contrasts. Of sounds near and far. Of harsh tchacking magpies and distantly mellifluous starlings. Of a loud croaky wood pigeon at roost in the tree, and of a pheasant making its creaky calls as it roams the nearby field. Of trains skimming the horizon on the mainline from London to Peterborough. And of a noisy farm vehicle as it rattles and splashes and bumps right past the microphones on the puddled trackway. Then by again. Grittily tracing its way back to the far field whence it came. It's a late November day, less than an hour to sunset. There's a horse, echoes of bird scarers from across the fields, and still a bee, buzzing by left to right between the leaf-bare trees. One for sorrow two for joy, three for a girl four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told.
Sat, November 28, 2020
43 Tidal water mirror still - a sound view from Canvey Island
A bird calls out. Its cry carries far out over the water on this, a rare day of no wind. Not even a breeze or a whisper of leaves in the trees. Cows low from farmland on the floodplain beside the Thames Estuary. From a hidden nest, little birds flutter in and out. What planes there are pass softly, almost inaudibly, but just enough to reveal the vastness of the bright afternoon sky. It's hanging on, the light, longer for a late November day. Away from the footpath down a thick grassy slope we found the water, at rest between the tides. Shallow over boot stealing mud, it was mirroring the sky. A corner within the landscape of visceral stillness. Tiny bubbles are popping on the surface of the water. Almost too delicate to hear. We lower the tripod to get the microphones closer, then carry on with our walk to let them record alone. To the keen ear, murmurs waft in from out over the estuary of curlew, avocet and geese. Crows caw. A horse neighs. The air vibrates. This isn't just a pastoral landscape beside a wild estuary, it is edgeland too. On the western horizon, three perhaps four miles distant are tall cranes at work shifting containers. They place and drop, each makes a gentle roll of thunder. It's the London Gateway Port. The still water bubbles and pops. The little birds flutter back. Walkers clink the gate up by the field but this spot is well hidden from view. And what was that? Something plopped into the water. Or jumped out of it? Who knows, there was no one here to see.
Sat, November 21, 2020
42 Night beside a stream in Wales (sleep safe)
Up in the hills about three miles from the mid-Wales village of Ceri, there's a stream. It runs down into the valley mostly parallel to a road. The landscape is largely uninhabited. It's a very peaceful spot. To make this recording we had to push through thick brambles and climb down into a dell where the stream flows bright and shallow over worn stones. Sheltered within steep banks ankle-deep with dry leaves and beneath budding trees, the stream flows with a crystal clear clarity. We left the microphones to record overnight (see also episodes 13 and 21). This is the hour from about 3 to 4am. All the birds are asleep, except for a pair of tawny owls that can be heard calling to each other at the beginning. Cars occasionally pass up on the road in front, a reminder that there is an outside world beyond the perfect stillness that exists within this hidden dell. It is rare to have captured the sound of nothing happening.
Sat, November 14, 2020
Gulls at low tide along the River Thames
Where the Thames path draws level with the iconic towers of Canary Wharf on the south side of the river at Rotherhithe, we climb up and over the tide wall, then descend steep slippery wooden steps down onto an empty beach to find a place, to put the microphones. The tide is going out. Lazy waves lap and wash over the wet claggy mud. Flocks of squawking gulls scavenge along the shoreline. The air is humming with a city rumble. A vast panoramic vibration, silky, wide, like hearing the sky in sound. This area is a beating heart of global business, yet from this beach it's an astonishingly peaceful, even tranquil place. We are mid-way through another lockdown. A lone siren wavers along a distant road. Flagpoles rattle in a gentle breeze. A floating landing stage nearby rises and falls on the swell. Each time it knocks against its moorings in deep reverberant cluncks. It swings to and fro, like a slow pendulum. A tug boat gradually approaches from the west, then passes, ploughing its way east on the out-going tide. It's v-shaped bow wave rolls heavily towards the banks, then breaks past the microphones in surges of white wash. The gulls bob and leap.
Mon, November 09, 2020
Low tide on the Thames Estuary at Benfleet creek (no loud noises and best with headphones)
Bonus episode to mark 10,000 Radio Lento downloads. This is a shorter but no-loud-noise version of episode 29 'Trains planes and estuary birds'. Now in high definition sound, this an opportunity to hear the evocative sounds of the Thames Estuary at low tide, without the noisy aircraft which was included in the original episode. Since starting the podcast, we've covered 142 miles on foot with our children and the microphone gear, listening out for peaceful places to record. We don't have a car, so travel out of the city where we live on public transport. Trains can often be heard in our recordings, as they can in this one. It's a cloudy late August afternoon on the banks of the Thames Estuary near Benfleet in Essex. Wild gusts of wind race in over the water. Birds swoop and swirl over the exposed mudflats, hunting for food. Redshanks, gulls, little egrets, oyster catchers, curlew, avocet, crows. When the wind drops, the newly exposed mud and silt can be heard bubbling and popping in the drying air.
Sat, November 07, 2020
Jackdaws and flooded winterbournes - watery emptiness
On the edge of the Bayford Pinetum in rural Hertfordshire, in view of the surrounding farmland, there's a young birch tree, growing in a secluded hollow. In early September the foliage here was humming with late season bees, feeding on ivy. Now in late October, the land is rain sodden and the dell is flooded waist deep. Rooks caw and kaah, from high in the treetops. The air is alive with the watery sibilances of rushing winterbournes. Flocks of jackdaws tchack tchack over the claggy brown fields, ploughed over since our last visit. The occasional train slides smoothly through the forest, on the line that links Hertford North with London. Propeller planes hum over on their weekend flights. Jets pass, muffled in the cloud. High leaves rustle gently in the cool autumn breezes. They haven't got long to fall.
Sat, October 31, 2020
Tawny echoes in the cathedral of trees (sleep safe)
Night has fallen over the Forest of Dean. In the clearing where we left the microphones, the cool nocturnal air has begun to echo with the calls of tawny owls. Cars passing on the distant forest road hush like banks of wind through the high tree tops. Down on the forest floor, hidden beneath the twisted vines, a stream is revealed. Its watery eddies sparkle brightly through the darkness, reflected and amplified by the broad leaves above. When there's no light in a forest everything sounds different. Sharper. What was close, is closer. Reverberant. What was far, is farther away. But between the echoes, there is silence. Between the tree trunks, branches crack, a creature squeals, a distant dog barks. Murmurs of murmurs seep through from the outside world. Falling softly on the gnarly bark of this ancient tree, in this giant forest where the owls live, these are the sounds of the night-time passing.
Sat, October 24, 2020
Rain in Abney Park
Tucked behind buildings, encircled by busy roads in the borough of Hackney in London, there's Abney Park. It's one of the 'Magnificent Seven' cemeteries of London with marble-topped tombs half hidden by vines. It is a designated nature reserve protecting a rich ecological environment. Locals nip in, to take their dogs for a walk, to clear their heads and to get lost on its winding paths. It's home too for a rich variety of birds, including green parrots. Planted as an exotic arboretum in 1840, there are around 200 trees, some still remain from that first planting. It's a mild October day, and the rain is falling. Everything is being drenched. After a long time walking under dripping canopy we find a spot for the microphones. Set back from the path it's a small leafy hollow, bisected by a diagonal spur growing out of an old oak. The rain is falling heavier now, sifting down in waves down through the branches, pattering onto millions of waxy leaves. These old trees are bathing in it. They're pushing away the noise of the city, and sheltering the tranquillity of Abney Park under their boughs.
Sat, October 17, 2020
Wind over the Bridgemarsh Marina on the Dengie Peninsula
While we went off to explore along the river banks of the Crouch, we left the microphones behind to record on the windowsill of a derelict shed just inside the deserted marina on the leeside of the prevailing wind. As time passes, yacht masts set shaking in the wind ring out, some like bells. Taught lines whistle. Restless halyards knock and settle. A redshank, some cawing crows, impatient gulls and a curlew. There are starlings too, perched on the power lines. A late foraging bee, a propeller plane, and some distant motorbikes on the B1010. It's afternoon, but a cockerel makes it sound like morning. Two dogs bark distantly while two men tinker in a nearby shed beside some dry-landed rocked-over boats. A jet plane softly rumbles out to sea, far above the marina. There's a flag near to this shed. In the wind it is restless, flapping and furling and unfurling.
Sat, October 10, 2020
Suffolk Wood part 5 - the hour to 1am (sleep safe)
Night has come, and owls, to clear the slate. In this wonderful old wood the August air is still and filled with brightly chirping crickets. A propeller plane hums into the Eastern sky, its sound mixes with the soft rumble of a high-altitude jet, and dissolves away over the wood. The feeling of peace is mesmerising. Hidden in their treetop nests, countless wood pigeons, wrens, robins and rooks are sleeping. Still as statues the trees stand waiting. Dead branches drop, some fall with a single thump, others clatter down through leaves. Sounds float into the wood blurrily from the world outside. Ducks and geese, hints of far-away night traffic on the A12, and ghostly echoes, cows and sheep grazing the surrounding meadows. Is time really passing or is the wood dreaming? It's sifting yesterday away. Then, a bell strikes 1am. Beautiful. Crystal clear. The parish clock, several miles away and barely audible during the day. There are murmurs of a breeze throughout, and hazes of tiny delicate sounds like flurries of dry rain that come in waves. Perhaps leaves microscopically jostling in the cooling air.
Sat, October 03, 2020
Wind on water under an equinoctial sky - on the Dengie peninsula Essex
Not a place for unstable microphones. A mile along the winding footpath beside the River Crouch, with Althorne railway station and the ringing masts of Bridgemarsh Marina behind us, the landscape ahead is barren and wonderful. We pass concrete river bank reinforcements like sculpted mounds, treacherous slippery with weed. Further on, we come upon a stony beach and leave the microphones to record on a tripod, at the water's edge. We bid them farewell while we retire for a flask of tea. Drawn by the low tide and a waiting sea, fresh water streams urgently out, shallow over stones, rushing in sparkling eddies, blown this way and that by the equinoctial winds. But at 12 minutes alone and overcome by the pressure of air, the tripod keels over. It clanks onto newly exposed mud and stone, saved, by the outgoing tide. They carry on recording with flowing water perilously close. From this angle, the sound balance has shifted. Less river, more sky. A desolate grey sky, alive only with wind. The water hurries on. A lone redshank rings overhead. Gusts bully and blow. Wet mud glistens and dries. Then at 19 minutes seen from afar, back one of us runs over the stones, to set the tripod straight, to record a little more. The River Crouch is shrinking steadily, as it empties itself into the sea. Another lone bird passes. Then back we come again to collect the microphones and carry on with our walk to Burnham-on-Crouch.
Tue, September 29, 2020
Champagne shingle on Felixstowe beach
It's just after midday in August and very hot. Families are out on the beach sunbathing, children play in the water. At the shoreline, cool waves wash and dissolve onto the shingle. With each recession of a wave, water fizzes over the stones, sometimes frothing like bubbling champagne overflowing from a glass. The waves roll in on currents that lift and curl. Each wave kneads and brushes the shingle in its own unique way. The detail is intricate, each fragment of stone moves with it's own audible signature. Sitting so close to moving water is like a balm to the ears. To celebrate six months of Radio Lento, here's 19 minutes of watery ear balm from Felixstowe beach!
Sat, September 26, 2020
Folkestone Warren - Spitfire flypast then coastal murmurings
East Cliff overlooks the Channel and on a clear day like this, has a hazy view of France. On the way down to The Warren Beach, steep down a narrow winding path lined with stubby trees, we found a quiet spot to record, free of road noise. We left the microphones on a little tree overgrown with ivy, leaning out over a precipitous bank, thick with undergrowth and more trees overlooking a campsite below. Listen-in to the sound of the distant sea pervading the air like a soporific pillow. At 7 minutes, the scene is temporarily and dramatically interrupted by a World War II Spitfire. It appears from the land behind, heads briefly out towards France, before turning back. 45 minutes of coastal tranquillity returns. Now settle into the sound of the ocean murmuring with some comfortable wood pigeons, robins and seagulls. Light breezes ruffle leaves, children's voices float up from the campsite, high planes cross the sky. At the foot of the cliff the odd train passes along the Folkestone to Dover railway line.
Sat, September 19, 2020
31 Late summer heat bathing under splendid trees - peace in the Clinton-Baker Pinetum
Basking in 30 degree heat borrowed from July, it's a still September day. This forest, set in the Hertfordshire countryside, is at its calmest. As it is so quiet, it may take a little time for your ears to adjust. It is late on a Monday morning, there's nobody else around to hear the woodland alive with the buzzing of insects and scattered bird calls of rooks, robins and wood pigeons. This forest, first established in 1767, is bisected by a railway line linking Hertford North station with London. Regular passenger services reverberate the cavernous space beneath the trees as they slide through. There's a heavy freighter at 40 minutes pulling smooth wagons that scythe the steel rails, and at 63 minutes another, a single locomotive with squeaky suspension. The noise of the passing trains seems to accentuate the sense of space in this wood and to intensify the silence in between. It's a silence sparsely punctuated by flocks of jackdaws as they forage the surrounding fields, and at 54 minutes a buzzard, a drooping whistling call as it circles high above the tree canopy. This recording highlights just what an unusually peaceful place this is. It is a rare spot in the south of England where there is no road noise. The airspace above has layers of slow rumbling, high altitude jet planes, then lower down their tuneful cousins the propeller planes, banking and wheeling over the landscape. These are in themselves calming sounds. This non-stop spatial audio recording, made from the trunk of a tree just next to the public footpath, runs for 73 minutes. Its length shares the extraordinary qualities of the Clinton-Baker Pinetum as a long-form listening experience. Lastly, because it is so easily missed, hear at 32 minutes far off over the fields the bell striking 12, this is St Mary's Church Bayford, built by William Robert Baker. Listen to other episodes from this special place .
Sat, September 12, 2020
30 Wind and time passes in the Forest of Dean
It's 8am and deep in the forest, steady banks of wind are pushing into the upper canopy. Above, the sky is pale blue, bright. It is late May, the day begins. This is the last section of a 12 hour all-night recording. When we set the microphones up the day before, the air was still and warm, rich with the scent of untouched leafy ground. Now in this new day the high branches are swaying, their broad leaves hushing. Drops of water from a night rain shower onto the thick viny undergrowth that carpets the ground. Perched amongst them blackbirds, song thrush, wrens, wood pigeons, great tits and robins sing songs that reverberate around this cathedral of trees. And through the trees, from winding forest paths, dogs bark on their morning walks. Nearby, just beside the microphones, little birds occasionally flutter down to poke about in the undergrowth. Moving and changing, these tall trees stand timeless, gently blown by waves of wind. This episode comes in higher definition sound for a clearer listen.
Sat, September 05, 2020
Trains, planes and estuary birds
It's a cloudy late August afternoon on the banks of the Thames Estuary near Benfleet in Essex. Wild gusts of wind race in over the water. On this side, spots of rain float in the air but a mile away on Canvey Island there's sun. It's low tide. Birds swoop and swirl over the exposed mudflats, hunting for food. Redshanks, gulls, little egrets, oyster catchers, curlew, avocet, crows. We climb down onto the mud and leave the microphones beside a tall upright rock for some shelter. It's not unlike a standing stone. The traffic on Canvey Island is a distant rumble, punctuated by the occasional motorbike. From behind, an aircraft takes off from Southend Airport flying directly overhead, tearing the sky, then out over the estuary. The wind drops and a blissful peace returns. Feathery wings swoosh nearby. Trains pass softly on the London Tilbury Southend railway line. Mud bubbles and pops in the quiet, sparkling with the movements of tiny creatures enlivened by the drying air.
Sat, August 29, 2020
Night rain falls on a Peak District moorside
It's 1am. In a remote wood set amongst steeply sloping fields above the now infamous Todbrook reservoir in Whaley Bridge Derbyshire. Heavy drops of rain have started to fall. Each fleeting drop punctuates the night air. A pair of owls appear from nowhere, calling to each other. The last flights to Manchester airport make their way over the moor. A restless lamb bleats. Hidden in almost complete darkness the rain reveals to the ear the thick canopy of leaves above. There is no wind. the trees are still. A single pinprick light glows far away over the moor. It's the last streetlight that marks the outer boundary of the town that lies a mile down the valley. Time passes. The rain gradually gets heavier.
Wed, August 26, 2020
Dead of night beside a lake in the Lee Valley Park - sleep special
It is 3am. At the water's edge, the shadows are thick. A single star reflects in the ink black water, bobbed by passing ripples. The wide-open waterscape is alive with the sound of birds, swimming and calling, drippling the surface of the water for food, cleaning their wings, landing and taking off. Something creeps through the foliage nearby, perhaps a swan in search of a place to settle. The air's still balmy from the hot day before. Soft breezes come and go, rustling the leaves of the over-hanging trees. In woodland across the lake, muntjacs invisibly call to each other, their dog-like barks carrying easily over the water. Miles beyond, undulating waves of traffic flow along the A10, sounding sometimes like distant wind. This recording was made in July. Microphones were hidden in a tree on the edge of the lake and left to record all night. The location was hidden away from the path, tucked down a shallow bank behind dense trees, nettles and brambles. A special spot known only to birds, insects and mammals.
Sat, August 22, 2020
August breezes through an ancient Oak
In the middle of a sundrenched field in Gilston Park near Harlow in Essex, a crow calls far-off to the left, a bird scarer fires shots to the right. It's a warm afternoon and there's a brisk August wind blowing across the landscape. Sitting beneath the vast boughs of an ancient Oak, shoulder-high grasses, thistles and sappling hawthorns hiss and flail in the wind. Dead branches reach out like arms, while green leaves on the healthy branches bounce and rustle. A bird comes to perch nearby. A fleeting fly whizzes past the microphones. From time-to-time the wind drops, and the A414 can be heard in the distance. Filtered by distance through acres of grass, the roadlike qualities are gone. It has become a soft wide noise across the horizon, a waterless tidal flow.
Sat, August 15, 2020
Cooling off beside sifting waves at Felixstowe Ferry
Sitting on a warm shingle beach where the river Deben joins the North Sea, feet stretched into the cool water. It's a hot afternoon and the ferry over to Bawdsey has made its last crossing of the day. Waves wash over the fine shingle, shifting and sieving, sweeping to and fro, fizzing and receding. A little way over on the right, a rock pool fills and empties with the swell. Seagulls fly out over the estuary mouth towards the sea. Small motor boats pass. Tilled up by the action of the waves a fragment of stone tinkles like a bright piece of metal. There's a gentle onshore breeze. Towards the end, the soft sound of a high altitude jet becomes a rumble that dissolves into the eastern sky. ** Share this restful soundscape with someone - buy a Radio Lento sound card **
Sat, August 08, 2020
Peace beside the tidal Thames near Stanford-le-Hope in the county of Essex
Forty minutes walk from Stanford-le-Hope railway station, along residential avenues and a service road that leads to the nature reserve, past a single story brick built municipal transformer station that hummed in the hot afternoon sun, down a stony footpath where we stopped to pick blackberries and over the freight railway line to the nearby London Gateway deepwater container port via the level crossing, we found this hidden away beach. It is set back from the main channel of the Thames in a small bay. The beach was empty except for one other family. We put the microphones to record in a sheltered spot and retired to brew tea on a camping stove, then relaxed to the lapping waves and the sound of the children playing happily in the sand. This is almost twenty four minutes of pure bliss As the tide goes out and the waves change. The engine of a marine vessel moored some way off emits a low bass note. Occasionally a deep industrial thud can be heard from the container port. Towards the end the mud slightly fizzes as it is exposed to the air. A lone bird calls faintly as it scours the fresh mud for food. A propellor plane hums distantly over in the South West.
Sat, August 01, 2020
Brutalism and crickets of the A10 flyover
Beside the A10 flyover in the Hertfordshire countryside, crickets bask in summer heat and road noise. The flyover has been designed to reduce the noise and impact of the road across the valley. It isn't perfect. Leaks in its noise barriers made the passing traffic sound like objects shooting along a tube. From a certain angle the cars seem to vanish in mid air. Far over on the right, as cars join the bridge on stilts, each makes a loud thump, like a giant see-saw. This is a section from the start of the New River Path between Hertford and Ware. **Re-issued in high-definition sound.**
Sun, July 26, 2020
Summer sunrise over a lake in the Lee Valley - raucous birds start the day
The Lee Valley reservoir chain comprises thirteen lakes that separate the London Boroughs of Haringey and Enfield to the west from Waltham Forest and Essex in the east. The area is made up of marshes and parkland, rich in wildlife, including woodland and water birds. This recording is of the dawn chorus around 5am when nobody is around. It was captured by a pair of microphones looking out over the lake from a tree that overhangs the water's edge in the Fishers Green Nature Reserve. It starts gently, water birds dabbling around for food, and builds up over 40 minutes to swirling raucous gulls and flapping flocks of geese taking off and landing, against a backdrop of woodland birds from the surrounding area, and the sound of distant traffic on the A10. It's a surcluded spot on the soily bank, almost close enough to dip your feet in, hidden under trees, an ideal position to listen to life on the lake.
Mon, July 20, 2020
Murmurs of the Kerry Ridgeway (part 2) - what rush hour sounds like in the hills of mid-Wales
Over the hills above the sun is going down. It's been a warm dry April day along the Kerry Ridgeway. High pressure, light breezes. It's late afternoon and cars, tractors, farm vehicles and the odd lorry rattle past. Hidden behind hedgerows down a steep bank a timeless stream flows under trees. It is alive with birds. The ground is ankle deep with dry leaves. Occasionally a roving bee comes along, to look at the microphones. This is a secluded spot in a wide open landscape of steep fields and woodland.
Sun, July 12, 2020
Arable farmland in the Essex countryside
Along a narrow footpath that threaded through wide open farmland we came across a lonely outcrop of young and exposed oak trees. Their dry leaves hushed and rustled and hissed in response to the changing strength of the wind. It blew quite strong at times. We set up the microphones to record. The occasional lilting bird calls are from a buzzard, a broad-winged hawk that was circling the area. About five minutes into the recording a tractor began mowing a neighbouring field. These are the sounds of nature, the wind and of a worked landscape. At the end the buzzard flew right over us as we came to collect the microphones.
Sun, July 05, 2020
Suffolk Wood (part 4) - 11pm
Inside the wood the ambience is changing from evening to night. Now it is owned by the crickets, hidden in carpets of leaves. Muntjac deer move about softly. Twigs and dead branches drop surprisingly often into the soft ground with a thud. Aircraft of indeterminate origin over-fly the wood at high altitude. Owls call. The parish church strikes midnight near the end. Deep listening with headphones helps to uncover the qualities within this recording.
Mon, June 29, 2020
A summer walk in rural Hertfordshire - sunshine and showers
Yesterday on an ancient bridleway that runs through open farmland, just before the rain clouds caught us up, we stopped for a picnic on the edge of a wheat field. As the clouds approached we recorded the sounds of the strong breezes playing in the dry wheat and through an outcrop of trees. The wind dropped and we carried on walking along the bridleway as the rain fell, scattered through the leaves of the trees that line the path either side. The sun came out, the air became heavy and humid. Crickets signalled to each other, hidden in the thick grass,
Sun, June 21, 2020
Cathedral of trees - the Forest of Dean (part 1)
About a kilometre into the forest we left the microphones strapped to the trunk of a huge ancient tree. The spot was well off the beaten path and opened onto a natural clearing with a cathedral like acoustic sound. This recording starts just after 9pm to capture the sound of twilight turning to dark. At 33m there's an owl. More at 40m. Then the strange call of a woodcock.
Sun, June 14, 2020
Early summer breezes
On a warm breezy walk in the Essex countryside, we left the microphones in a tree at the top of a rarely used bridleway to record the sound of the wind. The tree was one of an outcrop that lines fields of barley and home to a robin. High above the fields are skylarks, not a common sound these days. In the distance there's the odd ice cream van too in the Lea Valley Park. It's a lovely spot to get away from everything and soak up the warm sun grassy freshness and summery sounds. Recorded in June as London's first lockdown started to ease.
Mon, June 08, 2020
Sound-scenes of ocean waves
On-shore wind cuffing at the ears, breakers hauling at pebble banks, walking over shingle ridges to greet the incoming tide. Soft sands, waves retreating leave fizzing foam to dissolve over seaweed at the strandline. Wading ankle deep in warm lazy seawater rippled into dizzying motion by the breeze. Heavy waves lug at the quayside wall clicking with barnacles. Five scenes: 1. Rye Harbour England. 2. Brighton Beach England. 3. St Just, Cornwall and then 4. a sandy beach on the Adriatic coast Italy. 5. Fowey Harbour England.
Fri, June 05, 2020
Suffolk Wood (part 3) - 10pm
The crickets the wind in the trees make the softness of this wood. This is the hour up to 11pm. Starts with 10 minutes of a loud muntjac deer barking very close to the microphones. Owls in the distance follow and creatures creeping about. Two distinct gun shots at 15m 30s. At 30m 24s a pheasant scared calls out very loudly. The peace returns for the remainder. The church clock chimes 11 near the end.
Mon, June 01, 2020
Murmurs of the Kerry Ridgeway
In a remote spot just below the Kerry Ridgeway in Powys Mid-Wales, where a stream runs along the bottom of a wooded gully beside a country road, lies some rural peace and tranquillity, and what must be the murmurs of the Ridgway, voiced in the trees. The Ridgway is an ancient trading route between Wales and England that never drops below 1000 feet. Recorded on a sunny afternoon in April 2019, catch the sheep being fed, occasional cars and farm vehicles passing by on the road above the gully, and the infectious call of the early blackbirds amongst chif chafs, hedge sparrows and wrens.
Sun, May 31, 2020
Murmurs of the Kerry Ridgeway
In a remote spot just below the Kerry Ridgeway in Powys Mid-Wales, where a stream runs along the bottom of a wooded gully beside a country road, lies some rural peace and tranquillity, and what must be the murmurs of the Ridgway, voiced in the trees. The Ridgway is an ancient trading route between Wales and England that never drops below 1000 feet. Recorded on a sunny afternoon last April catch the sheep being fed, occasional cars and farm vehicles passing by on the road above the gully, and the infectious call of the early blackbirds amongst chiffchaffs, hedge sparrows and wrens and bees.
Sun, May 24, 2020
Sleeper train from Paris Austerlitz to Port Bou
Experience the mesmerising sound of the world passing by, recorded from outside and inside a couchette on a SNCF sleeper train one August night. Departure is from Paris Austerlitz just before 11pm. The train journeys through the night and takes 12 hours to get all the way across France to reach Port Bou in Spain. Hear the announcements and the train pausing in the early hours of the morning at Toulouse.
Mon, May 18, 2020
Under a large umbrella (rain and thunder)
June 2016. A summer thunderstorm is passing over North East London. The atmosphere is electric. It's the final hour of polling in the referendum to decide whether the UK remains or leaves the European Union. Sheltering under a large umbrella in the back garden of our little terrace house, listening for the next roll of thunder. Long expectant gaps. Sharp pin prick drops landing in hundreds as brightly spatial clicks on the taught fabric. Then, slow crumpling rumbles that open up the vastness of the sky Listener notes: this audio is recorded using high quality binaural microphones. They fit into each ear and capture very accurately the way we spatially hear sound. The only way to properly listen back to a binaural recording is using a pair of headphones. Set the playback volume low and gradually raise the volume until the level feels about what feels realistic in your experience of being out amongst the rain.
Mon, May 11, 2020
Suffolk Wood (part 2) - 9pm
An hour of pure immersive peace and quiet from that spot in the wood where nobody goes. This surround audio recording is unedited and just as it happened. Underneath the trees hear crickets, aircraft gently passing far above and the parish church chimes 10pm towards the end. Muntjac deer trot about and one begins to loudly call across the wood at the end.
Sun, May 03, 2020
Dawn on a Peak District moorside
This time of year the sparsely wooded hills just above the now infamous Todbrook Reservoir in Whaley Bridge Derbyshire resound with the dawn chorus. Thrushes, wrens, robins amongst many other types of birds and a woodpecker and from a nearby farm the cockerel announces the arrival of a new day. Steep grass moorland, grazing sheep within gritstone walls slope down the valley towards the reservoir.
Tue, April 28, 2020
Sheltering in the back garden (from a storm)
With some very loud thunderclaps this spring storm passes over the back garden. Sheltering in an old shed beside a high wall. The rain eases off and the birds keep singing happily. Towards the end an explosive thunderclap sets off a car alarm. Recorded a few years ago in binaural audio the garden is situated in Handsworth Wood Birmingham and sounds most realistic on headphones or earbuds.
Wed, April 22, 2020
Suffolk Wood (part 1) - 8.30pm
It is just after half past eight in the evening in the Suffolk wood. The sun is setting. It is dusk, very warm and dry with light breezes. There are no people about. The A12, about four miles away provides a reliable hum. Aeroplanes lazily arc overhead. Crickets chirp, leaves move in the breeze, what may be muntjac deer creeps about. Listen out for the distant bell of St Marys Church, it can be heard striking nine.
Wed, April 15, 2020
Fowey, Cornwall - where land meets sea
Walking along a cliff path lined with crickets the sea appears, steep down to the right. There's no one around. There's time to listen. There's a dot on the horizon, a boat. Hardly moving. At 6m30s we move to a different location - down a flinty path and over deep sand to the water's edge. The water fizzes. Is the tide coming in, or out? At 13m45s, back up on the cliff path, warm grassy wafts and around the headland to another bay. At 19m06s, looking down from above the sea sounds different in this bay. A pontoon out in the swell occasionally rocks against its mooring. Finally at 24m55s, at the shoreline to sit and be close to the waves. The tide's feeling lazy. It is going out.
Fri, April 10, 2020
Sleeping city waves
Hearing London at night from a small patch of grass bordered by shrubs, flowering plants and a bay tree, a typical garden in Hackney enclosed within old brick-built walls. Just before 3am distant machines began to fill the air with gentle undulating washes of sound. The effect is pleasantly soporific. It's a wide landscape recording and quite delicate, best through headphones or on speakers when everything is quiet.
Fri, April 10, 2020
A babbling brook at night
At the bottom of a steep-sided thickly wooded and uninhabited valley in the rural county of Derbyshire, England, this babbling brook fills the night air with its watery melodies. In this recording made in early summer, the occasional pair of owls can be heard, and what might be creatures flitting in the shallow water. It's an unedited recording of a real place, part of a 14 hour non-stop take to capture the essence of the valley, and so includes some human activity too, nothing much, the odd car passing on a distant road and a few aircraft of different types over-flying the hills.
Thu, April 02, 2020
Pyrenees walk cicadas
Best with headphones or earbuds if you have some handy. At times steep and very rocky, this is a surround-sound audio recording of a walk through trees and scrub that's alive with cicadas. It is August, early evening and the temperature has subsided to a luxurious 30 degrees. The path never ended. It led us into the wilderness. Lots of space to listen, relax and unwind.
Sun, March 29, 2020
Episode 1 - Suffolk wood at 6am
It is mid-August. The early sun is lighting up the treetops against a pale blue sky. You're hiding out in this rural wood which is typical of any in the South East of England. You're listening to it waking up with the sounds of jovial wood pigeons, rasping rooks, sparkling wrens and robins. Rabbits hop about between the trees, over carpets of dry leaves. As if from nowhere a woodman starts work, clearing fallen branches. Miles away, the A12 flows with traffic, softened by the distance into an oceanic haze. Pheasants prowl under the lazy arc of a passing jet aircraft. Escape to this secret place and watch through your ears as the new day unfurls.
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