Radio Lento podcast

Warm sunlit afternoon. Late August. On the nature reserve at Mucking, beside the Thames in Essex. A bird hide. Perched on a steep bank amongst reeds, looking out on a strip of newly exposed mud. Tide falling. Water receding. Soon, when enough mud is exposed, maybe the curlew will come.

"Listen" a voice says. From inside the bird hide. Though empty, someone is there. Between the bright of the slot windows, within the shadow, there's a figure, of an old man. Not creaking its timber floorboards, he moves towards the threshold, but then stops. "Can you hear it?" He asks, in a soft brown tone. A curl of smoke from his pipe wafts on the breeze.

Softly washing tidal water. Breezes rustling in tall reeds. A cricket, there but barely perceptible, hiding somewhere. Basking in the sun. This place, beside the bird hide, though near habitation, feels beyond civilisation. On the edge of something else. Like an outpost. But what can the old man mean? A single drifting seagull. Faint noises of the bankside industry. Or is it that nearby clink, of loose metal on stone?

"It's all around," he says, slowly raising his arms as if to fly away. "In the all around". Subtle. There, and not there. A low, undulating hum. A slow, quavering tone. What is it? The old man smiles. "They say it's the wind in the telegraph wires". Then backs, and disappears into the shadows inside the bird hide. As if in reply the sound rises, and falls. Rises, and falls again. Marking the quiet. Marking the time. "It's just the voice, of the wind".

* We recorded this piece of captured quiet on the almost completely deserted nature reserve at Mucking on one of the last days in August. The wind in the telegraph wires is subtle, and worth finding a pair of headphones and a quiet place to listen. At about 29 minutes the curlews do come. We still can't work out what is making the occasional chinking noise. There was nobody at all about. Someone (not any of us) does walk along the path next to the bird hide near the end.

A straight and stony path heads through open country, towards the sea. Beside the track, amongst land in-between, a tree. Lone and leafy. Like a sentry. Exposed and standing. It watches the sea birds. Hears their wide and freeing calls. Feels summer gusts of salty air. And listens, to a distant thrum. A vessel. At sea. Slowly passing.  

It's daytime. Rain clouds are moving overhead. Loose stones lie along the narrow track, wettening, and darkening, and waiting, for the first feet of the day. In the hedgerow, the tall grasses wave on the edge of golden fields with sculptured hay bales resting. Sheep graze. Jackdaws fly, against a slender band of ocean grey. Time passes. From within the tree, raindrops are landing amongst broad green leaves. 

This is how the world sounds from the Creel Path, a track that runs from Coldingham to St Abbs on the east coast of Scotland. The route has a history going back a thousand years. In bygone times, fishermen used it to trudge to their gruelling work. We left the microphones alone to record in the only useful tree we could find on this stretch of the path. It looked out towards the sea, about a quarter of a mile away. The same view for 1000 years. 

Children play on a soft sandy beach by the Essex Wildlife Trust nature reserve at Stanford-le-Hope. When the tide goes out, this amazing hidden beach is revealed. Water laps. Families bask in the sun. Distant engines of passing marine vessels thrum the air. It's hard to believe that this is reclaimed, re-wilded industrial land.

As east as you can go, deep amongst the sedge grass on Wallasea Island the temperature climbs above 30 degrees. Insects busy and buzz on hot rising thermals. Warm wind whirls and whisps. Here, below the footpath, near an inlet brimming with water, a pocket of perfect summer quiet simmers in the heat haze.

Low tide on an empty shingle beach near Felixstowe Ferry, with the waves rolling in. The sun is high in the sky, shining almost directly down onto a calm North Sea. Blue sky. Nobody about. Far away on the horizon you see a container ship is about to disappear over the horizon. Time just to stand, and imagine where it might be going, and enjoy the spatial sound of waves advancing and retreating around your feet.

In-land now. Rain. Heavy rain. Persistent rain. When a gloriously refreshing soundscape comes to you, and begins to land all about. All about your home, the space around your home, and the streets and gardens nearby. Millions and millions of tiny percussive drops, falling, and landing, from invisible high up clouds. Each drop ends its long downward journey, on top of an upturned plant pot. An old paint tin. A concrete paving stone. A tarpaulin stretched over a little back yard. And there it is. Bliss! 

Free moorland wind gusts through the branches of an old, lone oak tree. It stands tall, in the corner of a windswept field, beside a gritstone wall and a metal gate, that chinks, and an ancient footpath. A Peak District tree, with wide reaching bows laden with wind catching leaves. How many storms has this tree survived? How many droughts? How many days of grey? And of bright afternoon sun, like this one, where country walkers pass from time to time. This is the unique sound that this tree makes, high on a hill above the railway line between Chinley and Edale, Derbyshire.

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Don't forget that from next Saturday we're back to our normal service posting up a new and unique piece of captured quiet every week.

For now here's where to listen to the full episodes from this final daydream:

• 24 - Peace beside the tidal Thames near Stanford-le-Hope in the county of Essex (24 minutes)

It's the dead of night. Along an exposed stretch of seawall East of Burnham-on-Crouch, a deluge has started. Rain lashes down from a pitch black sky onto the swirling water of an out-going tide. This is the River Crouch, and the microphones are capturing the essence of this nocturnal estuary landscape, opposite Wallasea Island in Essex.

Bright daytime, on Landermere Creek. Wild water surrounded by green fields and farmland. Gulls, redshank and curlews speed up and down the creek on fast, blustery breezes. In this place there's a strong sense of escape, and of a world where land, sea and weather interlace. 

On a rock, closely suspended above a small patch of exposed shell beach at the mouth of the Blackwater Estuary, near Bradwell-on-Sea, the microphones capture the pristine detail of the incoming tide. The way these particular waves move. the way they lap, and hurry along the contoured rocky edges, as the tide slowly rises. It's a sound that no matter where you are, or what you're doing, happens twice a day, everyday. 

We stumbled upon a fallen tree whilst walking over Galley Hill near Epping Forest. the M25 sounded further away than usual, so we tied the mics under its steeply angled trunk for some shelter, and left them to record the ambience of the place alone. Some rain falls in large heavy drops, from ominous grey clouds seen from miles away approaching. But this rain didn't. It fell from an open sky, light as it was light grey. Flocks of jackdaws flew overhead, surveying the wide open fields between the outcrops of trees. 

We always set out to capture the closest 3D aural experience we can, so with a pair of headphones, you can close your eyes and feel yourself present somewhere else, somewhere perhaps more natural, and peaceful, but without our human presence disturbing the nature that lives there. As dawn breaks over  a wood in Suffolk, the mics capture, almost close enough to touch, a rare experience of small furry animals, scampering about with each other, on the crisp summer-dry forest floor.

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Thanks for listening and for spreading the word about Radio Lento, a self-funded podcast helped by listener recommendations and donations. Last May we went to the Podcast Show in London and walked about feeling like ducks out of water! Ad spend, business plans, audience growth and sales. We're typing this in a Youth Hostel far far away, with the mics still out on their overnight record, and being pelted by rain, we feel much better.

Here's where to listen to the full episodes featured in this daydream: 

• 90 Wind on water, night curlews, rain later *sleep safe (39 minutes)

Wondering along the path from Althorn to North Fambridge in Essex. Skylarks! Their contented never-ending songs, wheeling about slowly in the warm thermals somewhere, high above. Almost as far as the eye can see, a vast waist-deep plantation made of millions of waving stems and leaves is catching the breezes, shushing and sissing in sympathy with the moving air. This, is open country, crossed by the rippling River Crouch on its way to the North Sea.

A blackbird sings, out over the swirling water at Wrabness. It's perched high up in a gnarled tree, leaves catching the softly flowing breezes. It's the closest of a whole bank of trees to the estuary water, and the last before the mud of the exposed shoreline begins. The tide's just turned. A warm, quiet summer afternoon, and nobody's about.

Midday in August. Sun beating down. Strong, radiant heat. It's making the crickets cricket in the grass beside the marina. Cool, deep water, glinting, with lines of sailing boats, all moored up. Their masts knock in the wind, and sometimes sound like bells. Seagulls. Out over the basking River Crouch, 

Inland, across the other side of the vast county of Essex, the churchyard of St Mary's Gilston is at rest. It's unusually peaceful because it's under a very quiet sky. Rare. A phenomenon of 2020 and 2021. A secluded spot, where walkers can stop, ease their feet on the wooden bench, and listen to wood pigeons cooing on the warm slates of the church roof.

Towards London, where the last piece of Essex country blends into the series of lakes that make the Lee Valley Park, the night is coming. The paths, usually busy with people enjoying their freedom, are empty. No more bikes and scooters. No more barking dogs. No more chasing kids with trikes and ice creams. Just dark bush crickets under the hedgerows, and swans, slowly swimming over still, twilight water. And the echoing hoots of owls.

Listen to the full episodes where these short daydreamy clips are from:

• 116 - Sissing plantations in open water (25 minutes)

Begin, by a country church on the hills above Harlow in Essex, and at the foot of a jovial fir tree, hushed by warm wind. It's a sunny afternoon and a blackbird is singing in the secluded churchyard of St Mary's, Gilston. Wood pigeons are sunning their wings on the old slates of the church roof. Great tits call from the long hedgerow that forms a natural boundary to the open fields beyond. 

The open fields beyond. You slip into a daydream, and imagine yourself not beside vast open land, but beside a vast, and open sea. You can almost hear the waves lapping. No, not quite lapping, it's more that they're washing in. Washing in on an incoming tide, from the cool expanse of the North Sea. You're on the Blackwater estuary, listening to the waves coming in. Playfully flowing over tiny, feather light shells, that form a carpet under your warm, bare feet. 

Hot noon sunshine. Eyes blurring. Rising thermals from the dense sedge grass, and a heat haze to make you think you're in a dream. Now you're on Wallasea Island, a little further down along the Essex coast. A nature reserve, and a home to wild birds and countless buzzing insects. It feels like high definition. Pristine and taught with high frequency sound. The aural evidence of an ecosystem that's being nourished with more of what it really needs to exist. Bask for a minute, in its existence. Its intense August heat, and all its life-affirming sound.  

You follow the rain clouds, inland. Float over miles and miles of land, criss-crossed with rivers, and roads, and strips of woodland, and buildings and settlements. Towards, but not quite, to London. By now the clouds are out of rain, and are now, just clouds. Below is a lake, No, a collection of lakes, Darkening, but that still just about reflect the clouds. The dusk is rapidly gathering. Far below, on the ground, on the thick overgrown ground that forms one bank of a large lake-like pond known as Norman's Pond, the dark bush crickets have come out. Cricketing their sharp, precise stridulating sounds to each other. Then along comes a creature. A small mammal, of some kind. Squeaking, like a children's toy. Can it be real? Where has it come from? It comes, and goes, through the leaf litter, on its jerky, squeaky way. Perhaps the swans, out dabbling on the smooth still water, will know...

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These minute segments are taken from the following full episodes:

• 65 Songs from the churchyard (50 minutes)

We're sharing these mini daydream adventures while we gather new material over the summer. Full-length episodes will return in September.

Thanks for listening to and supporting Radio Lento, a podcast for anyone who loves authentic captured quiet. Each episode is recorded by us, on locations that we find by exploring the landscape on foot, and by listening. We're independent sound recordists, helped by your >>kind donations

After an hour's steep upward toil, through a thickly wooded gorge and along some very precipitous granite rock formations, you reach a wooden footbridge. Here the landscape's totally changed. Just dense bracken, a rough winding path, all slanted steeply up to a wide open sky. Somewhere, up there you think, is an ancient stone circle known as the Nine Maidens.

But no Dartmoor walk should be done, or needs to be done, without stopping to take in the atmosphere. This footbridge is a natural stopping point. You rest on its weather beaten beam, look down into the tumbling stream, and think at how it nourishes the woodland below. The air is rich with the smell of verdant undergrowth, moist rock and deep green mosses. Then you see an interesting tree, a little further on, growing beside the water. 

At the tree, you sit down for a rest. Looking up, you see it's several types of tree, growing together as one. In front of you begins the wood that runs down into the valley. Behind you the bare path up to the Nine Maidens. But here, in this spot beside the tree, and for this little piece of time, you've found some pure, watery bliss. Feeling the tree's soft bark against your back and the luscious cushioning moorland grass beneath your outstretched legs, you let the richly spatial flowing water lull you into a delicious, dreamlike doze. 

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** Over August we're pausing the release of new material so we can travel and find more quiet places. Instead we'll be posting collections of clips we made for Essex Wildlife Trust, along with links to the full episodes so you can listen without having to search the back catalogue. Thanks so much for listening and for your on-going support, including donations which we combine with our own money to keep the podcast going. This week we reached a significant milestone of 200k downloads. Have a lovely August and we'll see you in September!

For this week's episode we're back in the Forest of Dean for a different kind of captured quiet. Quiet that transforms from one thing to another. A kind of sonic metamorphosis. 

The segment from this overnight recording begins at around 4am when the space around the oak tree holding the microphones is still pitch dark, and pristine quiet. Intimate. A clearing, deep within an expansive forest, where the night air carries so little sound that only the trickling stream can be heard. It reflects narrowly off the trunk of the tree, like the flickering light of a campfire. But when a woodcock flies by, on its *roding flight, the sense of pristine space is temporarily revealed.

This sense of closeness, of being beside an old oak tree and a trickling stream, surrounded by dense and tangled undergrowth, continues, occasionally graced by the distant hooting of an owl, and a passing high altitude passenger plane.

But then, something in the forest changes. Strange new sounds, floating in, from far beyond. Fragments of distant birdsong. Filtered through countless trees, countless empty voids. Echoing, and reverberating. The intimate space, thinning, giving way, opening out, and lightening, through the gathering sound.

A song thrush, heard left of centre of scene, sings out and becomes the first real soloist of this newly evolving place. Widening. Expanding as each new bird joins in song. The proportions of the space growing, from an amphitheatre. Then, to a cathedral. 

* In late spring male woodcocks make roding flights to attract females. Just after dusk and just before dawn, they fly at speed through the treetops making a combination call that sounds like a quack that ends with a squeak. This recording captures the roding flight in 3d spatial audio and so reveals the way the bird is moving.

Heavily, this winter rain falls. Persistent. Cold. Wet. Refreshing. In waves. In sprinkling flurries. Over time. Onto the huge tarpaulin stretched across the yard, each drop's long downward journey is both completed, and revealed, in one tiny moment. 

It's actually quite loud! And so dense and complex and layered with detail that we tend to hear it as, well, just rain. Just plain old, simple, rain. Listen in though, especially through a pair of headphones, and layer upon layer of spatially detailed rich textured sound will to you become revealed. And if you're in the mood for it, for some really good, long, refreshingly detailed rain, it seems the longer it goes, the more it holds your attention.

Rain, depending where you live in the world, can be a very ordinary thing. But it is also a very spacious and complexly detailed thing. Best captured with panoramic binaural microphones. 

When it comes, it redefines the place it lands. In fact, it entirely changes it. Before the rain came, this little backyard, was just some outside space, waiting for another day to come. But with its collections of things, so many of them resonant to the tap and patter of the falling drops, the space suddenly transformed, and became full and bright with meaning. 

The canopy and the upturned paint tins. The empty plastic tubs, the wide leafed shrubs, small bushes and the old shed with broken boxes on top. The stack of old planks lent up against the outside wall, beneath a dripping gutter, the exposed patch of concrete paving and the dull wintering grass. And the lone discarded football, kicked into the middle of the lawn. Every thing. Revealed in sound. By falling rain.

With Wrabness station behind us, the footpath stretched ahead. A warm summer day. Skylarks singing overhead. Sweet scented breezes freshening the clean, optimistic air. 

Soon, a huge expanse of natural uninhabited land was there in front of us, gently sloping down to the estuary water. From here it's nothing more than a silvery slither seen between tall, long established trees.

We stop  by a fenced meadow with a horse in it.  By a bramble bush with a family of resident tweepy birds. Near a strange house that looks like no other. The sense of sheer openness, was so rejuvenating, we felt we just had to try to capture it.

Once fixed to the fence beside the rambling brambles, we left the microphones to capture the landscape, alone. The house, nearby, is called Julie's House. "A house for Essex".  Conceived by the artist Grayson Perry, it's a building that serves not just to shelter and protect it's occupants, but to tell a story to those who pass by.

What do the skylarks make of it though? Who knows. But their singing does light it up. Light up the house's ramped tiles and sound reflective structures, which as the birds wheel over strongly reflect and amplify their songs. What a thing to discover! A house, that's a sound mirror for skylarks, at the edge of an estuary wilderness.