Radio Lento podcast

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! 

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.

 

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!).

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. 

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. 

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. 

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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.  

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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!  

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 a steady sumptuous rising tone, the locomotive powers up again, to haul you and the new passengers onwards, over the rails, and into the night.

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.