“On the last night of my holidays, I hoped to record the jackdaws that congregate in the trees next to the Basilique Notre-Dame de Délivrance in Quintin, Bretagne. When I arrived there, a concert was in full swing inside the church. I recognised the music from when I sang it more than 20 years ago during an Erasmus in Wales. It was Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace, an anti-war composition for soloists, choir and orchestra. I stood there for a while, listening to that familiar and still all-too-relevant music, in the company of the jackdaws. I forgot to take a picture, so this one is from the next morning. “

“At low tide, the beach of Hillion in Bretagne is dotted with rocks full of oysters, sea snails and other clicking, crackling, crunching creatures. One of those rocks was particularly striking and loud. In the distance: a band of seagulls and other waterbirds. Maybe you can even hear the rather spectacular sunset.”

“One night in Cornwall, around 2 AM, I heard a tawny owl outside the holiday cottage where I was staying. I quickly grabbed my Zoom H5 and went out in my pyjamas. As I was standing there, listening, a second sound emerged: a motorcycle, travelling through the hills of Rosudgeon and Goldsithney. The nocturnal duet between these two lone creatures lasted for minutes on end.”

“I woke early on Saturday morning to head to Camden, and then Farringdon, to record the sounds of the River Fleet. It is one of London’s twenty ghost rivers. Ghost rivers are watercourses that once ran through the city in the open air and were later buried: culverted, paved over, built upon, redirected into pipes and drains beneath streets that no longer show any trace of them. They are still there. Still flowing. Just hidden.

I’ve been thinking about them a lot recently, in light of what’s happening to this world we’re in, and the damage humans have done, building concrete structures on top of a flowing river being just one small, telling example.

Despite it being 7.30am on a Saturday, you can hear a car alarm going off somewhere nearby, a reminder that this river runs beneath a city that has mostly forgotten it’s there. But then, as I lowered my recorder into the drain, the sound of the river crashed forth. A power and a trickle, so strong even in these hot summer days. I tried to listen, and to hear what it was saying.”

“Just recorded this! It’s the choir in the church behind our apartment mixing with fire engines.”

“Love how this vintage pinball spot sounds — you can really hear the rattling of the bells and the smack of the flippers, the whoosh of the ball shooting up the alley and around the bumpers. Alas, too, the agony of defeat. Best game (and date destination) ever!”

“I’ve been to the top of Signal Hill more times than I can count. But never while there was enough fog to trigger the foghorn. I loved hearing the foghorn call out among the sounds of the ever present, blustery wind and the many tourists. 

I’ll send a photo of the view of the narrows at the entrance to the most easterly harbour in North America.”