Radio Lento podcast

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

 

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.