Radio Lento podcast

• 265 Low tide on the causeway (sleep safe)

  Last week we visited Burgh Island in Devon on the south west coast of England. We made two overnight recordings, both looking out towards the island from Bigbury-on-Sea. The island is connected to the mainland by a sand causeway. This passage of time is from the second unaccompanied overnight recording, midnight to 1am.  The darkness is solid. A landscape only sparsely inhabited. Low tide was several hours ago, but you can hardly tell that the sea has started to come in. Weather conditions are extremely mild with wind speeds of only 1 to 2 knots, gusting 5 to 6. After the first few minutes, the wind that's been audibly rustling the leaves of the palm tree holding the Lento recording box, drops to virtually nothing.  The stillness reveals an aural expanse of true pristine quiet. The beach, stretching from far left to far right. The sand causeway, directly ahead, leading up onto the island. The sea, a split view with crashing waves audible both on the left side and the right side of scene, with the island a silent space in the middle. It's very rare we discover a landscape that possesses this level of peace. Such quiet enables the most delicate and the most spatial qualities of the aural environment to be perceived. A scene of an island, asleep, between two seas, at low tide.

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• 264 Garden rain at night (sleep safe)

  Last summer when we were stuck at home, and when heavy rain was forecast between midnight and three, we decided it'd be nice to capture its sound. The idea is enchanting. Rain, falling, on a little suburban garden, verdant with plants and shrubs of various kinds, as they quietly and invisibly sleep through the night.  Hearing this scene though, is only possible by staying up and getting very tired and wet. But this is where the Lento box comes in. By leaving it out all night to do the listening and capturing, in natural spatial detail, we can then re-experience the sound of time passing through a pair of headphones or Airpods. It's a much more comfortable way to appreciate what a place sounded like, when there was no one around to witness it. If you've listened to Lento before, you'll know we usually capture the sound of falling rain from underneath a large tarpaulin we have stretched across our back yard. This time we decided to try something new. Right at the end of our little garden there are lots of plants and shrubs huddled against an old brick wall. Along the top of the wall is a wisteria plant that's got very big over the years. So many different types of leaves, we thought, to catch the rain drops as they fall. Just before midnight, and as the first rain began to fall, we placed the Lento box on a short tripod directly underneath the wisteria, and left it to record. Water was already pouring down through the leaves. A test for the box's weatherproofing, we hopefully muttered to ourselves, as we closed the back door and shuffled off to bed. * The recording location was north east London in July 2024. We have carefully chosen a segment of time where the least traffic noise and human activity is audible. Some micro-editing was needed though to ensure unavoidable noises such as heavy raindrops landing directly onto the microphone baffles and the occasional crump of cars rolling over local speed bumps have been softened out. Some planes overfly but they are very soft and gentle in tone. We have tagged this episode sleep safe due to the minimal impact of these non-natural sounds.

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• 263 Wild open coastal reserve

  Sat back, looking onto Rye Harbour nature reserve. There, to the ear, is the sea. From here it's out of sight, somewhere below the long shingle ridge. From this point across the reserve, it could to the ear be an aural sunrise. A wall of natural energy, lighting up the horizon with clean, white, spatialised noise. On the intervening  land, stray gusts of wind swish swathes of sea grasses. Press whispily through thin wire fences. Lift circling seagulls even higher. Billow shapeless banks of cloud, from left to right of the gradually illuminating sky, water and air.  In such an exposed panoramically vast space, come the timeless calls of sea birds. Animated brush strokes on a canvas that stretches from far left, to far right of scene. Each stroke, is an individual. Each, a living thing. A soul, for whom this wild open place is home. * This early morning hour is from an overnight recording we made last month from the edge of the nature reserve at Rye Harbour, East Sussex. It captures the sound-feel of wide open emptiness that you get when out and about on the reserve. It's also a rich source of naturally spatialised blue-grey and dark grey noise, produced by the sea and shaped by uninterrupted expanses of gently contoured shingled land.  ** Lento is 5 today! Happy birthday to us! Thank you for listening, sharing and supporting us over five years. More here > https://ko-fi.com/radiolento

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• 262 Night stream at West Quantoxhead (sheep sleep safe)

  We found our way to record this remote location late at night, and in near total darkness. A sheltered dell, with a fresh running stream. Earlier in the day, when everything was bathed in bright grey light, we'd walked through this secluded place on our way down from West Quantoxhead, and decided it might be a perfect spot for the Lento box to make a long overnight recording. There's a branch just above your right shoulder, my partner quietly calls up from below. Can you use that to lever yourself up? The height I'd just gained had markedly improved the spatial clarity of the wrilling stream, so just a little higher, I thought. We really need to be able to properly hear the full width and detail of the water, as it flows through the dell. How still this place is. How perfectly balanced it sounds, nestled within the wildness of this wide open West Somerset landscape. To reach the branch I had to work my way through a mass of prickled twigs in the dark while holding the Lento box in one hand. After some not insignificant effort, the branch, and my elbow, connect. I haul up, wedge in, and tie the box onto the trunk. To be sure this spot meets the criteria we've evolved over the years, I try to match my head with the box, and hold completely still. Listening. Absorbing the scene. Slightly adjusting the angle of the mics, so they can capture as much as possible of what it is I'm actually hearing. Good, I quietly call down, this is it.  We head back to where we are staying, leaving the Lento box to record alone, non-stop through the night. Without us or indeed anyone else about to witness, time passes. Looking down from the tree, the stream wrills, and the landscape murmurs its nocturnal murmurings. Sheep can be heard, sometimes moving vaguely, through the dark. And one seems to come to rest beneath the tree holding the mics. From time to time it makes the softest, most gentle noise, that a sheep can surely make.

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  1:00:45
• 261 Midnight in Rye

  Twelve strikes the clock, of St Mary's Church in Rye, East Sussex. Midnight. A sound that for anyone left awake, opens a new page. It's a new day, captured by the Lento box perched high above the churchyard, one night in mid-February. The new day reads like this. The gnarled limb of a winter tree beside the churchyard creaks against an undulating wind. The flagpole at the top of the belfry tower, rattles, like the mast of some windswept sailing ship.  The sky is heavy with cloud and dark. Coastal air ruffles and catches in the rooftops of huddled 14th century cottages. They look gathered in around the church, like a solid congregation. Time passes. Banks of wind rise, then subside. Creaks and rattles punctuate the night air. And the Quarterboy faintly chime out the quarters.  St Mary's has a good clean bell. It echoes off the huddled houses beautifully. Sonorous tones, that seem to ring out with the same golden grey hues of the stones from which this ancient coastal town is built. The skittering leaves blowing and the almost too faint silvery ding dongs of the Quarterboys.  * We captured this sound-view of St Mary's Church Rye last month on a freezing cold windswept night. We rested the Lento box on the outer ledge of a second floor window that looked over the churchyard and straight at the church itself (with a chain to stop it falling). Do let us know if you can hear the quarters being struck, they are subtle but just about audible. ** Explore more from Rye. Listen to the sound inside the belfry in episode 200. That was a windy night too.  *** We're building up to our 5th birthday. Watch this space! 

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