Radio Lento podcast

In the middle of a sundrenched field in Gilston Park near Harlow in Essex, a crow calls far-off to the left, a bird scarer fires shots to the right. It's a warm afternoon and there's a brisk August wind blowing across the landscape. Sitting beneath the vast boughs of an ancient Oak, shoulder-high grasses, thistles and sappling hawthorns hiss and flail in the wind. Dead branches reach out like arms, while green leaves on the healthy branches bounce and rustle. A bird comes to perch nearby. A fleeting fly whizzes past the microphones. From time-to-time the wind drops, and the A414 can be heard in the distance. Filtered by distance through acres of grass, the roadlike qualities are gone. It has become a soft wide noise across the horizon, a waterless tidal flow.

Sitting on a warm shingle beach where the river Deben joins the North Sea, feet stretched into the cool water. It's a hot afternoon and the ferry over to Bawdsey has made its last crossing of the day. Waves wash over the fine shingle, shifting and sieving, sweeping to and fro, fizzing and receding. A little way over on the right, a rock pool fills and empties with the swell. Seagulls fly out over the estuary mouth towards the sea. Small motor boats pass. Tilled up by the action of the waves a fragment of stone tinkles like a bright piece of metal. There's a gentle onshore breeze. Towards the end, the soft sound of a high altitude jet becomes a rumble that dissolves into the eastern sky.

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Forty minutes walk from Stanford-le-Hope railway station, along residential avenues and a service road that leads to the nature reserve, past a single story brick built municipal transformer station that hummed in the hot afternoon sun, down a stony footpath where we stopped to pick blackberries and over the freight railway line to the nearby London Gateway deepwater container port  via the level crossing, we found this hidden away beach. It is set back from the main channel of the Thames in a small bay. The beach was empty except for one other family. We put the microphones to record in a sheltered spot and retired to brew tea on a camping stove, then relaxed to the lapping waves and the sound of the children playing happily in the sand. This is almost twenty four minutes of pure bliss As the tide goes out and the waves change. The engine of a marine vessel moored some way off emits a low bass note. Occasionally a deep industrial thud can be heard from the container port. Towards the end the mud slightly fizzes as it is exposed to the air. A lone bird calls faintly as it scours the fresh mud for food. A propellor plane hums distantly over in the South West.

Beside the A10 flyover in the Hertfordshire countryside, crickets bask in summer heat and road noise. The flyover has been designed to reduce the noise and impact of the road across the valley. It isn't perfect. Leaks in its noise barriers made the passing traffic sound like objects shooting along a tube. From a certain angle the cars seem to vanish in mid air. Far over on the right, as cars join the bridge on stilts, each makes a loud thump, like a giant see-saw. This is a section from the start of the New River Path between Hertford and Ware. **Re-issued in high-definition sound.**

The Lee Valley reservoir chain comprises thirteen lakes that separate the London Boroughs of Haringey and Enfield to the west from Waltham Forest and Essex in the east. The area is made up of marshes and parkland, rich in wildlife, including woodland and water birds. This recording is of the dawn chorus around 5am when nobody is around. It was captured by a pair of microphones looking out over the lake from a tree that overhangs the water's edge in the Fishers Green Nature Reserve. It starts gently, water birds dabbling around for food, and builds up over 40 minutes to swirling raucous gulls and flapping flocks of geese taking off and landing, against a backdrop of woodland birds from the surrounding area, and the sound of distant traffic on the A10. It's a surcluded spot on the soily bank, almost close enough to dip your feet in, hidden under trees, an ideal position to listen to life on the lake.

Over the hills above the sun is going down. It's been a warm dry April day along the Kerry Ridgeway. High pressure, light breezes. It's late afternoon and cars, tractors, farm vehicles and the odd lorry rattle past. Hidden behind hedgerows down a steep bank a timeless stream flows under trees. It is alive with birds. The ground is ankle deep with dry leaves. Occasionally a roving bee comes along, to look at the microphones. This is a secluded spot in a wide open landscape of steep fields and woodland.

Along a narrow footpath that threaded through wide open farmland we came across a lonely outcrop of young and exposed oak trees. Their dry leaves hushed and rustled and hissed in response to the changing strength of the wind. It blew quite strong at times. We set up the microphones to record. The occasional lilting bird calls are from a buzzard, a broad-winged hawk that was circling the area. About five minutes into the recording a tractor began mowing a neighbouring field. These are the sounds of nature, the wind and of a worked landscape. At the end the buzzard flew right over us as we came to collect the microphones.

Inside the wood the ambience is changing from evening to night. Now it is owned by the crickets, hidden in carpets of leaves. Muntjac deer move about softly. Twigs and dead branches drop surprisingly often into the soft ground with a thud. Aircraft of indeterminate origin over-fly the wood at high altitude. Owls call. The parish church strikes midnight near the end. Deep listening with headphones helps to uncover the qualities within this recording.

Yesterday on an ancient bridleway that runs through open farmland, just before the rain clouds caught us up, we stopped for a picnic on the edge of a wheat field. As the clouds approached we recorded the sounds of the strong breezes playing in the dry wheat and through an outcrop of trees. The wind dropped and we carried on walking along the bridleway as the rain fell, scattered through the leaves of the trees that line the path either side. The sun came out, the air became heavy and humid. Crickets signalled to each other, hidden in the thick grass,

About a kilometre into the forest we left the microphones strapped to the trunk of a huge ancient tree. The spot was well off the beaten path and opened onto a natural clearing with a cathedral like acoustic sound. This recording starts just after 9pm to capture the sound of twilight turning to dark. At 33m there's an owl. More at 40m. Then the strange call of a woodcock.