Radio Lento podcast

• 275 Dawn in an apple tree - Derbyshire hills

  A bright April day has dawned in Derbyshire earlier in the spring. The air is unusually still for this time of year and this upland location. At just under a thousand feet barely a breeze is ruffling the trees surrounding the mics. These are the same trees that can be heard so powerfully in episode 250 - Moorland trees in mid-winter gales.  Far across the valley, stretching from far left to far right of scene, a country road threads its way over the moors. It links the small Derbyshire town of Whaley Bridge to the busier Cheshire town of Macclesfield about seven miles away. Due to a major land slip and road closure on the next valley, there is less traffic, though you can hear occasional cars threading the tarmac way through the landscape from time to time.   Mid left down the field, a woodpecker. In the same copse, a song thrush. From different points in the mid-distance seesawing great tits. Wrens too, and wood pigeons, and a chif chaf, and a pheasant.  Deep in the valley, geese can be heard over the reservoir. What made this segment of the overnight recording feel special though was the blackbird.  As time passes the blackbird lands on a branch of the apple tree directly above the Lento box, and sings so sonorously. And then does it again, as if it knows how special it is to witness a singing blackbird so close. 

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• 274 Burgh Island midnight tide (sleep safe)

  (pronounced Birr Island) This long, slow Devon day, is drawing softly to a close. Looking out to sea, the sky beyond has already fallen velvet black. It's midnight. Scattered lamps shine on Burgh Island. It looks from here more like a dark thicket, afloat on a vast water field. With glow worms, hiding.  The tide's in now. Closed around the island. Encircled it, with rich undulating sound. Filled up the wide sandy beach, for as far as the eye can see, with swirling shallows. Ankle deep. As the sea meets itself coming in across the causeway, it splashes up fingers of crisp white spray.       Some gulls are still aloft. High wheeling, but mostly quiet. Silently weaving between the stars. Riding on the diurnal winds. the off-shore breeze, or land breeze, created by the land-sea temperature contrast that happens at this time of night. * As with all Lento episodes it can take several minutes for your listening brain to properly switch into the soundscape. This one hour segment is from an overnight recording we made in April. The Lento box is perched on a second floor balcony looking straight down the causeway towards Burgh island, which is only about 200 yards from the box. Due to the topography of the beach and how it contours around the island, the sound-shape of the sea is interestingly different to other coastal locations we've captured. The breakers form and gather spatially, often very slowly, with long periods of swirling eddies in between. High tide is reached towards the end of this segment. Moderately strong wind gusts sometimes buffer the microphones. As a recording location it is exposed. We've applied some spot rumble reduction when this happens just to improve the experience for headphone / Airpod listeners.

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• 273 Sunset fields and oak trees - spring in Shropshire

  Oak trees have a very particular sound this time of year. It's to do with the leaves. Their texture, shape and contours. How they catch and filter the breeze. On a warm spring day, like this one the Lento box captured last month in rural Shropshire, you can hear the softness of the moving air sonified by banks of oak leaves. The scene around the microphone box, tied to the trunk of a relatively young oak tree, is endlessly rural. Ahead, over a bank thick with tangled shrubs, a wide field, vibrant green, is dotted with sheep and lambs. Song birds sing out from around the small nature reserve. A place called Poles Coppice. A point on the landscape with many neatly hidden well occupied perches. Birds are like nothing else. Their songs illuminate dusky shadows between the trees. And carry far. Over fields, bathed in late afternoon sun. And sheep, dutifully grazing   * Poles Coppice nature reserve is quite remote and has a lovely sound-feel, thanks to its resident birds and oak trees. the country road that can sometimes be heard mid-left of scene (far distant) leads to a small town called Minsterley. When that day last month we set out to capture the spring sound of Shropshire we auditioned various locations before eventually stumbling upon this particularly peaceful little place. Thank you to the guardians of Poles Coppice who created this nature reserve. We are so glad to be able to share its natural sound.  ** Poles Coppice is officially #LentoApproved.

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• 272 Emptiness within Shelve Wood at night (sleep safe)

  Experiencing the spatial sense of emptiness, in a natural place, when there's nobody about, endlessly fascinates us. We built a high resolution immersive sound capture device to study it. We find natural places to leave it out recording alone, to capture quiet scenes in sound. Of time passing. We are all intrinsically hyper-attentive to the possible presence of people within our surroundings. Any movement that might signal another person in the vicinity, fundamentally changes our thoughts. It deflects our mind's eye from fully connecting with the place. This is why we always set out to record in largely uninhabited locations that are good sources of naturally occurring sound. Before Lento came about, the question of whether or not a falling tree makes a sound when there's no one around to hear it, proved puzzlingly difficult to argue in classroom discussions. If only we could send back in time this sound-scene of Shelve Wood in Shropshire, that we recorded last month. Yes, remote listening is a thing. Be there and yet not be there to hear the trees. Slow banks of shifting air, brushing softly, panoramically, through the firs. And every drop of rain, that finds its way down, between the branches, to land on the soft dry carpet of the forest floor. Shelve Wood has an acoustic that conveys space. A vast space. It is a space that, especially at night, murmerates with deep, velvety echoes. Hushes. Thousands of conifers and spruce, moving together, in natural sympathy with the wind. * This section of time is from a 12-hour overnight recording we made last month in beautiful Shropshire. The fir tree that held the Lento box was impressively tall, and peaceful. 

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• 271 Wild breezes in the reeds - spring along the Thames Estuary

  This soundscene was captured two weeks ago from a rackety wooden fence beside a grass meadow. Reeds are growing to right of scene, waving and hushing in strong gusts of spring warm wind. Centre, a view out across the meadow. Left of scene, over a rough track and an overgrown strip of marshy land is the Thames Estuary. Above, from time to time, skylarks. Hidden not too far off in a thicket, a cetti's warbler. Various other birds come by, each a pleasure to hear, with its own unique estuary sound.  It's a scene that feels wide open and exposed. It's lashed by the weather. Strong gusts and breezes, and quick whispering winds. But being the end of May, it's warm. The sun is radiant. Its energy heats the ground, creating deliciously warm sweetly scented banks of moving air. Thermals, that the birds use to rise easily into the sky. The Thames, at this point sprawling wide as a lake, provides navigation not just for ships but for aircraft. Fortunately only a few pass over during the time of our recording. This is what nature along the Thames Estuary, from a rackety fence wobbling in the wind, really sounds like.      * Thanks again to Lento supporter Ian for taking a day to drive us and the Lento box out to the Thames Estuary. Getting to remote locations so we can capture and share the sound-feel of being there is what Lento is all about. And it ought to be quite a straightforward process. Check map for a nice looking location. Travel out to it with recording gear. Set up, press record, wait about for around an hour, then return home, listen to the captured soundscape and publish! The weird thing is despite having recorded at over a hundred different physical locations, we still haven't quite worked out how to persuade birds to sing on cue, wind not to gust out of control, rain to fall just when we want it, and cars planes and people to vacate the area while we are recording...

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