Radio Lento podcast

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 Scotland 

Listen to each episode in full via our blog.

Our grateful thanks to everyone who listens and supports Lento.  

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.  

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.