Radio Lento podcast

• 287 Dusk on Boggle Hole beach - North Yorkshire coast

  The still luminous sky above the sheer rock cliffs was turning an even deeper shade of blue, as we stepped down onto the wet sand of the beach at Boggle Hole. For a moment we just had to stand. Take it all in. Wide stretches of undulating sand. Half submerged boulders like sleeping elephants. Towering rock faces so vertical and so angled that they catch and reflect every breaking wave, every calling bird, every clack of a dislodged stone, back into your ears, so you hear them for a second time. The tide's been receding for several hours. We turn right, and walk to find a good spot to record. We follow the band of newly exposed sand along the tidal zone, dodging pools of stranded water. See sea birds swooping, then landing, momentarily. Snatch up a morsel. Then they're up and flying again. Herring gulls circle high overhead. Black headed gulls pass like projectiles, screeching for the empty air in front of them to get out of the way. Their bold cries caught, and reflected, by the plummeting cliffs of sheer vertical rock. This we know, we hear, we see, we feel, is a rarified place. A landscape of exceptional quality. It doesn't matter how many hundreds of miles we have to go to find places like this, it's always worth it. Environments where extreme quiet and extreme spatialness coexist, together, for hours. Undisturbed. Uninterrupted. Unspoiled. We found a spot, then left the Lento box on a tripod to record the scene alone, in the gathering dark. * We made this recording, or more accurately we took this sound photograph of Boggle Hole beach one evening last August whilst staying at the Youth Hostel. It's one of the most spatial sound captures we've made this year. Listen with headphones in a quiet place, and let yourself settle into the passage of time, to let your ears adjust and get the full spatial effect.

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• 286 Night crickets of the Kent coast (long sleep safe + some soft overflying planes)

  Capturing the sound-feel of real night quiet is special. It requires a lot of time and a location where quiet naturally occurs in more than just a fleeting way. Quiet is not silence. Silence is the absence of sound, whereas quiet happens when everything in the landscape is still audible. Just softer, and slower. Night brings quiet to natural and edgeland places. It enables us to better hear an environment's true spatialness and blend of sound signatures. By tying the Lento box to a tree looking down over the Warren on the Kent coast and exposing the microphones for over 50 hours non-stop, long periods of naturally occurring quiet were captured that serve as a true impression of this place. In this 90-minute passage of time taken from the dead of night on the second day of the recording, the sea can be heard distantly crashing onto the beach at the foot of the Warren. It surges and retreats, in slow unfurling rhythms. Close to the microphones, in the leaf litter around the tree, crickets call to each other in regular patterns, like naturally occurring clocks. Banks of wind blow in from time to time, gently ruffling leaves from left to right of scene. Sounds of indistinct origin sometimes echo across the valley, revealing the true width and depth of the space and far cries of seagulls, high flying in the vastness of the night sky.   Of course this is England, and only a short distance from France. The headlights of French cars are sometimes visible from this very point. The Strait of Dover is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, and a flight path runs directly over this area. Despite these mechanisms of human life, the planes that do overfly during this passage of time are quite gentle in the way they traverse the sky. It is the night quiet, and the sea, and the crickets that speak for themselves, and mean we just have to share this recording so everyone can be a sound-witness to the quiet of this place. * We made this recording back in August 2024. We didn't actually intend to leave the Lento box out recording for so long (into a third day) but we're glad we did.

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• 285 Late October on Chesil Beach (sleep safe)

  The making of this high-definition sound photograph of Chesil Beach began thanks to the number 1 bus from Weymouth to Portland. As we stepped aboard, the sky felt low. Folded and layered with grey October cloud. Rain was in the forecast so we'd taken raincoats.  After twenty minutes and the final stretch across the exposed coastal road, the bus pulled into our stop. On the way the views of Portland had struck an impressive sight, pointed bravely out to sea. It felt blowy off the bus as it always does here, but no rain, yet. We crossed the road, then up and over the largest shingle berm of any coastal area we know. Dropping down more berms, scrunching over more acres of perfectly rounded pebbles, we and the Lento box finally arrived at the shoreline. Here is a soundscape that's beyond description. It takes a few minutes to acclimatise. Aural textures and flows wash around and through us, folding and layering like the clouds above. We'd forgotten how everything about this place engages the senses. Redefines what's normal. Resizes us into what we are. Tiny individuals, standing upon billions of even tinier stones. The rain never came. Instead windows of blue opened and closed between the folds above. As the mics captured the scene The onshore breeze remained steady, letting the Lento box record every spatial and textural detail of the Chesil waves, only light winds buffeting. The sea glowed turquois blue against the ruffled grey sky. Each rolling wave then turned pure white, as it broke over the beach of rich brown pebbles. The shore here stretches as far as the eye can see. To left of scene. To right of scene. Turquois. White. Brown. A unique place, with a unique soundscape, crystal clear, free of interfering noise thanks to the giant shingle berm. * We made this on-location recording on Chesil Beach in Dorset just after 1pm on Wednesday this week. Special thanks to our friends and Lento supporters who live in Weymouth. They gave us a lovely welcome and a warm tea stop on our travels to make this recording. We feel it's one of the best sound captures we've made so far of Chesil Beach. further segments to follow in future episodes from this same location.

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• 284 The wind of Long Mynd

  Reaching the top of Long Mynd in rural Shropshire requires a good steady climb. The rocky footpath winds up and up, and so must you, if you want to get to the top. Most people do, as much for that sense of physical achievement gained over an hour or two, as the views. 360 degree panoramic views of all that makes this whole area so special. But before you get to those views, there are many other fascinating sights to be had on the way up. And not only for the eyes.  Long Mynd is both a wild place and an area only lightly impacted by overflights. Once you are within the dramatic contours of this ancient landscape it is likely you'll encounter periods of near pristine quiet. Pristine quiet activates something fascinating in us, something we normally can't engage. Heightened aural awareness. Heightened aural awareness lets us fully connect with the landscape via our sense of hearing.  Hearing is a kind of touch sense. While we can feel the wind as it buffits against our faces and bodies, we are thanks to the wind, able to perceive trees and grasses even though they may be a hundred yards away. Wind presses through their physical shapes and structures producing sound vibrations that then physically land on our eardrums. It's like we are touching them, even though they are beyond the reach of our hands.  The higher you go up Long Mynd, the more you and the landscape are exposed to the elements. The wind surges stronger and stronger. Where the narrow and very steep footpath threads along the edge of rocks and a plummeting drop, the wind cannot be ignored. It is physical, and it is enlivening. It enlivens us, and it enlivens the trees and grasses. the birds. The hardy sheep as they graze the upland pasture. The tiny grasshoppers and crickets, only heard when the wind drops.   * We made this recording up on Long Mynd back in August. It's perhaps our most precipitous recording location so far! We carefully attached the box to a dramatic hawthorn tree overhanging one of the many sheer drops, just off the footpath. Hikers can be heard passing up and down the stony path. Right of scene the wild landscape slopes steeply up. Left of scene slopes steeply down into the valley below. Centre scene are trees on the opposite side of the cleft. Sheep graze on steep ground below the tree for a while, and a raven or large crow briefly passes. We think there's a stonechat there too. It's very difficult to capture sound landscapes in the face of such powerful wind gusts, but the wind really is the very essence of this wild place, and so we've made an extra effort to sonically balance the hugely varying loudness levels in this recording and share what we hope is a listenable sound view of Long Mynd in beautiful Shropshire.

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• 283 Night trees of Boggle Hole (sleep safe)

  Robin Hood's Bay on the North Yorkshire coast feels remote for England. It lies at the bottom of a very steep road that descends down from the road between Whitby and Scarborough. The sign at the top of the village warns sightseers interested in a look not even to try driving down. With virtually no traffic noise and the whole area under a quiet sky, we knew this was a good place for the Lento microphones. The lane (we walked, obviously) winds very steeply down, passes a few little shops, a pub, a grocery shop with a jar part filled with fizzy drink to catch the wasps, and ends in a ramp onto the beach. Perfect waves break. Perfect because every detail can be heard cleanly, and precisely. No road or plane noise to get in the way.  Robin Hood's Bay was not actually our final resting point. For this we needed to walk about a quarter of a mile over the sand to the Youth Hostel at Boggle Hole. Delightfully named. Perfectly located.  Access across the beach is only possible when the tide is out. You know you're close when you reach a rocky stream that flows down from the cliffs. The last stretch, harder work. The stream is not walking boots friendly, uneven stepping stones look fun but need a confidence to use.  The Youth Hostel is tranquil. It really has the most peaceful surroundings of anywhere we've ever stayed. Above the hostel is a wooded area rich with rustling trees. As night approached we followed a tiny footpath up in between the trees. They swayed and hushed in the onshore breeze flowing up from the beach. We found a tree with a good trunk and tied the Lento box on to capture the sound of the night. * This section of time is captured in the woods above the Youth Hostel. It's from 3am, early August. Weather conditions are warm and dry, with moderate winds gusting to strong. Dark bush crickets live amongst the trees. They can be heard all through the night. They can, if you feel like it, provide something nice to count, like sheep, to help you get to sleep.

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