Radio Lento podcast

Time aside. And at rest. A quiet, leafy space. Folkestone, on the Kent coast. An area called the Warren, where forested steeps slope and tumble into the sandy wash of the sea.

It's early August 2022. A month of heat, like the south of Spain. The sun is up. The air's got that scent of another sweltering day to come. The hedgerow and the hawthorn tree holding the microphones are already hot. Turning the sun's energy into green variegated shades. And into warm leafy thermals.

As time passes, and late summer birds distantly call, a little party of beach-bound people scrunch by, scattering loose stones as they go. Straight ahead the white noise hush of the sea slightly rises, and slightly falls. So many crashing waves, smoothed to an average, by distance. From here, within this ordinary looking breeze blown hedgerow, the whole width of Folkestone beach can be heard. Witnessed. From a place called The Warren. England's edge. So close to France you can see it.

Dusk has come, and the Forest of Dean is, very gradually, darkening.

In the gathering dim, melodic song thrush, blackbirds, and some roosting wood pigeons are singing the last notes of the day. Sounding, from across this huge space, like they are already in a dream. 

Time passes. The hidden stream beside the oak  holding the microphones trickles, and flows, beneath tangled vines. High planes lazily traverse the velvet sky. Occasionally, cars distantly glide along the fast forest road, to the far right of scene. Filtered by so many trees they make a curved and wind-like hush. Then, in the distance, a dog's barking. And a lamb. Or did you just imagine it? A lamb deep in the forest? And the dog, was that really a dog? Perhaps it's just the dusk, casting dreams upon your senses.

But there's a woodcock! No mistake. It's the strangest of birds, making soft quack like calls as it speeds effortlessly between the treetops On its May-time roding flight. And an owl. Two owls. Hooting hollowly, in dusky echoes, from somewhere much deeper in the forest.

* This is a late evening segment from the 72 hour non-stop recording that we made last May, in the Forest of Dean. We found and recorded from the same oak tree that we tied our mics to back in 2019! You can hear that recording in episode 17, and compare how over those three years the sound-feel of the forest has changed.

There's a bench. Perfectly perched, by the sandy steps that lead steeply down onto Coldingham Sands. Perfectly perched, because the sound-view from this bench is so wide, and the angle just right to hear the incoming waves, as they break over outcrops of craggy, elephant-sized rocks.

It's a bright August day, and the sun is mistily lighting up the sea, the rocky cliffs, and the plunging, richly vegetated slopes. Conditions are calm. A little motor boat is bobbing on the swell, about a quarter of a mile off the coast. It's engine gently thrums the soft air. Land birds and sea birds ride the onshore breeze. They coo, and sing from the dense shrubbery that surrounds the bench. Dogs and owners pass by, as they head towards the open freedom of the sands.

This place, on the East Coast of Scotland, is special. It's a landscape under a genuinely quiet sky. A sky free of human-made noise, where the detail and quality of natural sound reaches the ear drums intact. With headphones on, this sound landscape recording (captured spatially by lone microphones) brings you the sound-feel of this place, of sitting on this simple bench, and listening to the ebb and flow of Coldingham Sands.

Dawn. Bright morning sky. High pressure, barometer rising. A vast quiet sky, etched with a few scudding clouds picked out by the light of the rising sun. Gone is the tranquil hush of night. These remote moorland woods are alive again! Alive and lit up, not just by the morning sun, but by countless singing birds. 

From a sturdy beech growing beside the ancient track, the woodland sparkles. Sparkles with an abundance of natural life to whom this patch of the landscape is home. It's crossed by a babbling brook that constantly flows with rain water running off the higher ground (audible right of scene). A place that at this time of day is almost completely free of human made noise. No traffic on the fast road other side of the valley. No overflights from rumbling aircraft heading to Manchester Airport. No hikers trudging by. 

By leaving our microphones out all night, we were able to capture the sound of this remote wood in its most natural state. The wood as it must have sounded in early May, throughout the years, decades and centuries gone by. Thankfully a sound landscape that's still there to enjoy, still connect with, through the clarity of the Lento microphones, and without disturbing the wildlife.

For the very last episode of 2022, and because it's so cold and dank, we want to use the magic of spatial sound landscape recording to teleport back into the summer! It's August 2017, and our microphones are out on their first ever overnight recording, lent up against the trunk of a tree in a rural wood in Suffolk. 

This passage of raw unedited time continues on from episode 112, and begins as the clock of St Mary's church, far over the fields, is about to strike 8am. A change in wind direction, and raised traffic levels on the A12 several miles away, make the bell sound more distant, and its sequence of chimes harder to count compared to the previous episodes from the dead of night. Wood pigeons, sparkling wrens, rooks and other woodland birds bathe in the bright morning sun, and sing out sonorously, through the richly reverberant spaces created by so many thousands of often very tall and long established trees. Later on, a buzzard can be heard circling, high over. It makes a simple and distinctive downward mewing call. 

The woodsman, who we had been told may start work just after daybreak, can sometimes be heard shifting fallen branches, and slowly trudging by. As time passes, planes softly cross the sky. Birdsong comes, and goes. There's a loud pheasant that passes, a bumblebee, and some stark snaps from hungry crows. 

Slow quiet rhythms, of a richly verdant and uninhabited summer wood. A spatial sound recording, that through headphones and for as long as it lasts, lets us and we hope you experience being present there in that wood again, on that warm and peaceful Suffolk summer's day.

* This twelve hour non-stop recording was the first we ever made back in 2017. It was this desire to capture the sound of the natural landscape in high quality spatial sound that convinced us to create Radio Lento, as a platform to share the uninterrupted audio. A place to listen to places. You can ** listen to the full Suffolk Wood sequence here **. 

Our warm thanks to you for listening and supporting. And wishing you a very Happy New Year! 

A barn, that's stood alone on the steeply sloping fields below the summit of Black Hill in Derbyshire, for longer than anyone can remember. This is the sound atmosphere from inside, recorded around 1am this morning.

Nobody and nothing is about. Not even the owls, that we've been told nest somewhere within the rafters. A storm is whipping up outside, across the moor. Strong sweeping wind, rumbling against the barn's sturdy stone-built structure. Gusting in, through its deep set windowless appatures. In time, the rain comes. Heavy. Falling onto the foliage outside. Onto the rushing stream that's filled the air around this barn for centuries, with a fine mist of natural white noise.

Capturing the sound-feel inside this remote barn has been something we've wanted to do for years. Last night we trudged up the moor, in the pouring rain with our microphones, and left them alone to record. We had no idea what they'd hear.

As we returned this morning, it struck us how, with its soft earthy base and timbered upper stage for the dry storage of hay, this barn would have served as a manger.

We hope you enjoy feeling the gentleness of this barn. Wishing you and all a very happy Christmas! And thanks for listening to Radio Lento.

Changing weather. Shifting scenes. The east coast of Scotland above St Abbs. A landscape whose geography leaves it exposed to everything that the sky can bring. Wind. Rain. Mist. Brilliant, revelatory sunshine. 

Here, listening to this landscape from within the leaves and branches of this tree. A lone tree along the Creel Path. The ancient Creel Path that's been trodden by fisherman on their way to work from Coldingham to the harbour at St Abbs, for a thousand years. 

By locating our mics within the natural shelter of this tree, and letting them record alone for twelve hours, we're able to capture the full width, depth and range of this place and its unique soundscape. What is made can be thought of as an ambient sound recording. Of rain upon the leaves of a small tree. Of a tree being blown by gusts of blustery coastal wind. Of a panoramic landscape made of fields, grazing sheep, and high circling seagulls above. Spatial. With contrasting shifting scenes. 

But this is more than just an ambient sound recording. Give yourself time to really focus on it. This recording is a real piece of time, captured on-location from a real place, in clean untampered audio. 

By listening to it, in a quiet place with a pair of headphones, it can work as a virtual aural experience that may shift the sense of conscious awareness. From the place you are listening, to the place that is St Abbs. You, for a while upon the Creel Path, free amongst the fresh air and natural quiet that's found along the coast of Scotland. 

* We set up Radio Lento as a place to listen to places. The real and authentic sound of naturally quiet and spatial places. Please let us know if you do manage to feel transported by listening, and which episodes seem to work the best. We read all comments and currently use Twitter @RadioLento as our main comms channel (for now!).

Hear. This solitude. This real captured quiet. This authentic air. From horizon to horizon. Near empty of human-made noise. Aural solitude. Rare? Becoming rarer? It is there though. It does exist. Out there. And can be found.

You can find it here, like we did, at this deserted beach. An uplifting stretch of land half way between Winchelsea and Rye Harbour. It's a place where you can sit down upon the beach, and listen to the sound, of time passing.

With nobody about. Nobody and nothing, to blur the pristinely detailed sounds that ocean waves make as they sweep and break over shallow shingle slopes. Break, and bend and quiver the air pockets, that occupy the spaces beneath the waves. A spacious sound landscape, made of soft rounded stones, and natural white noise. 

High in the Derbyshire hills, a century-old garden is being blown dry by brisk morning air. It's quiet. Sheltered. Surrounded by strong gritstone walls and tall trees. Over the lower wall is a perfect view. A steep hummocky meadow, and beyond, the vast deep space created by a wide vibrantly green Derbyshire valley. 

Birds, to whom the garden is home, fleetingly sing, and call. Some flutter right past the lone recording microphones that are tied to a wooden frame. The frame sometimes shifts in the wind and creaks as it so weatherworn and heavily laden with climbing plants. 

The sound scene is delicately soft and spatial. Like gently billowing fabrics. Hear-able fabrics, made of breezes that rise and settle, and flow from side to side. Hissing textures from the nearby foliage, murmuring and hushing tones from the neighbouring trees. 

The meadow beside the garden is scattered with grazing sheep, and the odd roaming chicken. When sometimes the warm sun peeks through the gaps in the cloud, wood pigeons coo. Aural sunbeams, in a peaceful, moorland garden. 

Peering out from atop the high seawall of Nothe Fort. Two o'clock in the morning. High tide, and the sea below feels so near. Overhead the sky is faintly luminous. But is dense black, out over the sea. Even blacker out over the invisible presence of Portland, somewhere over to the right.

Hearing the night's velvet silence, rippled by slow moving, crisp edged waves. Crisp edged, watery waves, that sound like shapes. Ocean swells, that fill the spaces between the submerged rocks. Sway the empty moored boats. Are these waves just normal waves? Or have they come here, to Nothe Fort, for a reason?

Notice how they hang around, at the foot of the fort's huge parapet wall. How, in graceful arching circles, they seem to come, but not really go. Come, and join other waves already arrived, to combine, and elaborate, and form new, even more graceful watery shapes. Watery shapes, that swirl in the dead of night around the ancient stone footings of Nothe Fort. 

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This is the third episode from our night recording from the Fort. Listen to episode 124 and episode 118 for more from this wonderfully peaceful place.  

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Big Lento thanks to Exploration Project on Twitter who kindly found a perfect photo of sea at night we could use in this episode to illustrate it. Thank you!