281 Night rain in the Pyrenees (sleep safe with chimes)
Beside the only road leading out of Sant Llorenc de la Muga we found a small group of trees. We didn't have much time. The sky was pitch black and the ground beneath our feet was streaming with water that'd all come down a few minutes ago in a deluge with simultaneous flashes of forked lightening so powerful, so bright, they'd temporarily frozen us to the spot. We shone our torch from tree to tree, searching for a suitable trunk that might provide some shelter for the Lento box. The road was deserted. Traffic was not an issue. Only one more village lay beyond, where the road literally ended.
A patch of bare trunk came into view between rain soaked leaves. Around us every thing glistened. And dripped. Every shrub. Every branch. Every leaf. To the eyes and to the ears it was a rich sparkling sensory experience, that seemed interchangeable. Reaching through we tied the Lento box onto the trunk, angled it onto the wide landscape scene, and left it to record alone through the night.
This segment of time was captured from just before 3am to just after 4am. Heavy rain falls and the sky periodically grumbles with thunder, but eventually it eases off. To the right of scene one and sometimes more tiny beeps can be heard from time to time. We aren't sure what creatures make these delicately fleeting sounds. Frogs perhaps, lizards, or insects? The sounds are both soft and yet very distinguishable in the soundscape, and comforting for some curious reason. The medieval clock on the church of Sant Llorenc strikes the quarters and the hours through the night. Ancient bells seem even more enchanting when heard in the dead of night, and through crystal clear rain.
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1:04:52
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1:04:52
280 Pyrenees thunder above watery valley
Our friends told us that in Sant Llorenc the weather changes towards the end of August. Endless days of thick summer heat gives way to something altogether more dramatic. Ominous black clouds the size of cities. Rain drops like translucent grapes. Fork lightening like you see at the cinema. Thunder, that carves open the sky, like unimaginably huge boulders crashing downwards from the high mountain peaks.
We followed the river Muga out of Sant Llorenc, into the valley beyond. Our aim was to reach a reservoir which we thought may be a good place to leave the Lento box to make an overnight recording. Eventually, along rough tracks surrounded by dense trees and noisy cicadas, we reached the water. Our way however was blocked. Two white horses.
Impressive creatures. Standing astride the track. They had their backs towards us. We stopped, and watched, and kept our distance. Despite facing the other way the horses knew we were there. In low voices we shared ideas on what to do, whilst continuing to watch. Both stood firm. They were expressing only the smallest of movements through their tails.
Some time passed. It felt like they were communicating something to us. But what? The valley with all its assorted cicadas seemed, somehow, to have fallen silent. We decided not to try to pass them. Something perhaps in the way they moved their tails said turn back. So we turned back.
Returning along the track we entered an area of the valley where the shallow river sounded unusually sonorous. The way the water tumbled over the rocks. the depth, and the particular arrangement of the trees. Just off the track a tree looked down into the gorge, so we tied the lento box to it. It was the perfect place for it to record. Perhaps, if we could have read the tails of the horses, this was what they were trying to say. Record back where you've come. Where it's sheltered. And where the river wrills. There's a storm. Coming.
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44:34
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44:34
279 Lento Long - Kielder Collection (180 minutes)
For this second August intermission we've once again brought together multiple recordings made across a location to share as one very long non-stop piece.
This episode is our second ever "Lento Long". Three hours of spatial sound landscape captured from the Kielder Forest in Northumberland in the North East of England near to the Scottish border. It may all be sleep safe, depending on your own personal sensitivities to bird song which is prominent throughout the first 90 minutes. The latter 90 minutes is captured quiet from the night.
Here's a guide to what you'll hear.
- The episode opens with a daytime sound-view from an avenue of tall firs situated east of the giant Kielder reservoir. Banks of fresh morning air is pressing through the firs in soft hushing undulations, and bright birds are singing from everywhere.
- At 49 minutes you seamlessly travel over the water by five miles to the south west of the reservoir, to a densely forested area just below the Kielder Observatory. It's afternoon. The woodland ambience is alive with a white noise haze created by a clean rushing stream, countless willow warblers, and gentle surges of rich brown noise created as banks of wind filter through Grandis Firs some tall as 15 storey buildings.
- At 1 hour 36 minutes this Kielder day becomes Kielder night. Returning to the same peaceful location you were east of the reservoir, this time to experience the sound-view of the reservoir at night. Those pristine hours before dawn, when only owls and echoes roam the spaces between the trees, velvety hushes of rich brown noise waft down from avenues of tall fir trees, and nocturnal geese can be heard flying far out over the ink black water.
The episodes we blended together to make this Lento Long are 257, 247, 222 and 240, where you can read in detail about each location.
* Lento resumes a weekly service of captured quiet from new places in September. We have some gorgeous new locations to share with you! Thanks to everyone for listening.
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3:00:46
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3:00:46
278 Lento Long - Quantocks collection (180 minutes)
It's August intermission time! This year we've decided to bring together recordings from more than one location in a specific geographic area and share them as a long non-stop episode.
This is our first ever "Lento Long" at 3 hours. A chance to aurally travel across a geographic area and experience it from different perspectives.
Depending on your own personal sensitivities to human made sound, it may be sleep safe. Children can distantly be heard playing on the beaches, and at just over an hour a microlight gradually drones over. For us this creates a wonderful sense of beach-time, where nothing in the world feels urgent anymore, but not everyone may respond in the same way so we haven't officially labelled this Lento Long as *sleep safe*.
Here's a guide to what you'll hear.
- The first hour is from the edge of the rocky beach at Lilstock in West Somerset, your back lent against a comfortable tree as the waves wash left to right with the longshore drift.
- At one hour this blends into the rarified ambience of Kilve beach at low tide, a soundscape carried into awareness with the gradual progression of a little microlight that slowly drones over high above.
- At one hour thirty, day becomes night. A weatherfront is passing over a remote cottage half way up West Quantoxhead. Fresh currents of Somerset air press freely through a bank of trees behind the cottage, setting their leaves and branches swaying, and hushing in richly undulating white noise.
- At just after two hours thirty, you invisibly reappear, sitting beside a secluded stream farther up the hill. You're listening to the pristine sound of water flowing off the top of West Quantoxhead, with the gentle company of two resting sheep nearby.
The episodes we blended together to make this Lento Long are 244, 254, 248, 255 and 249, where you can read in detail about each location. They were all recorded in late October 2024.
We'll release another Lento Long next week and resume the weekly service from the start of September.
Thanks to everyone for listening.
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3:03:54
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3:03:54
277 Emptiness within Shelve Wood at night - part II (sleep safe)
This week we're returning to Shelve Wood in Shropshire to witness another hour from the unaccompanied overnight capture we made in June. This section of time includes the effects of a strong weather front. It sweeps over the dense woodland, creating rich spatial waves of naturally occurring white, brown and grey noise.
Because the Lento box spent the whole night alone immersed within the forest, recording in high definition binaural sound, by listening back with headphones or Airpods we're able to aurally locate ourselves within Shelve Wood itself. Become aural witnesses. Hearing as if we are there, how time passed, surrounded by the trees. the sense of space. How each tree responds in its own unique way to the wind. And the rain drops, that find their way all the way down through the thick firs, to land on the forest floor.
* This section of time is from the early hours of the morning. The fir tree that held the Lento box was impressively tall. The Lento box captures the acoustical space of the forest facing outwards from the trunk, five feet (human height) above the ground. It's a vast reverberant zone that apart from the tree trunks, is essentially an empty space between the soft cushion of the forest floor and the ceiling of dense fir needles twenty feet above. In this zone the natural noises of the forest travel over long distances.
Surround yourself with somewhere else. Captured quiet from natural places. Put the ”outside on” with headphones. Find us on Bluesky @RadioLento. Support the podcast on Ko-fi.
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