Radio Lento podcast

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.

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. 

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. 

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? 

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. 

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? 

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.  

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.  

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.  

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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.