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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.
Episodes
Saturday Aug 27, 2022
Saturday Aug 27, 2022
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.
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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:
Saturday Aug 20, 2022
Saturday Aug 20, 2022
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.
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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:
Saturday Aug 13, 2022
Saturday Aug 13, 2022
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:
Saturday Aug 06, 2022
Saturday Aug 06, 2022
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...
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These minute segments are taken from the following full episodes:
- 65 Songs from the churchyard (50 minutes)
- 81 Rising tide in the rock garden (37 minutes)
- 80 A doze in the grass on Wallasea Island (39 minutes)
- 79 Essence of estuary (32 minutes)
- 54 Lee Valley Park at night (45 minutes)
We're sharing these mini daydream adventures while we gather new material over the summer. Full-length episodes will return in September.
Thanks for listening to and supporting Radio Lento, a podcast for anyone who loves authentic captured quiet. Each episode is recorded by us, on locations that we find by exploring the landscape on foot, and by listening. We're independent sound recordists, helped by your >>kind donations<<.
Saturday Jul 30, 2022
Saturday Jul 30, 2022
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.
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* 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!
Saturday Jul 23, 2022
Saturday Jul 23, 2022
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.
Saturday Jul 16, 2022
Saturday Jul 16, 2022
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.
Saturday Jul 09, 2022
Saturday Jul 09, 2022
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.
Saturday Jul 02, 2022
Saturday Jul 02, 2022
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.
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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.
Saturday Jun 25, 2022
Saturday Jun 25, 2022
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.
Saturday Jun 18, 2022
Saturday Jun 18, 2022
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.
Saturday Jun 11, 2022
Saturday Jun 11, 2022
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.
Saturday Jun 04, 2022
Saturday Jun 04, 2022
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.
Saturday May 28, 2022
Saturday May 28, 2022
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.
Saturday May 21, 2022
Saturday May 21, 2022
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.