Radio Lento podcast

This barmy afternoon in Holme-Next-The-Sea has gained a stiff undulating wind. It hurries past the sheep in the paddock next to St Mary's church. Whisps through banks of unmown grasses, sifting up their scent. Shakes dry-leaved hedgerows so they sound as summer dry as the baked mud looks by the lane. Yes, today certainly feels like it's the first day of late summer. 

Sit then on the bench underneath the fir tree. Rest back from the deep blue sky. Feel the sun's heat radiating off the parapet wall of the church. Hear the changing wind. How it hushes in the fir's needles. Rustles in the broad leaves of the deciduous trees. Rises, then calms. Causes the landscape to shift between near, and far. Surely this is how to best enjoy such a day as this. With sheep, grazing in the field nearby. And wood pigeons, roosting along the church roof and above, in the trees. 

Spending time on this bench, taking in the day and the various kinds of warmth that it seems to be made of, might lull you into a daydream, and a thought. How are the animals around considering this first day of late summer? Are they enjoying the scents of the grass too? The hushing of the wind in the fir tree? The yellow orange heat rising from the sun warmed ground? Maybe they too have let go their plans, and are just basking in the sensations of what it is to be conscious of everything that's presently, and pleasantly around.

* We made this recording in late July 2024. It was the way the wind sounded in the fir tree that caught our interest. Finding somewhere to locate the Lento box wasn't easy but we eventually managed to find a fence post that let the box capture the fir tree as it is in the wider landscape, beside the church. Sometimes the presence of the church can be felt as it reflects bird calls and other nearby sounds. At around 26 minutes the low rumble of a distant military jet plane can be heard for a short time. This part of England hosts various very active military airbases. We were in fact lucky to capture as long as we did before more and much louder jets flew over, producing intense low frequency rumbling.

Portland.

The Shipping Forecast marks its centenary on the BBC today. Happy birthday from Radio Lento!

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Take as a seat one of the large flat stones under a tree. It's a lone tree, full of sparrows. Watch the ocean boats. The high tide is on the turn. Shallow waves rolling about between the rocks. They're playing that game of colouring in. Darkening the boulders to show where they've been. Surge, break, wash, dissolve.  

Rest both hands on the sun-warm stone. Follow the ships and boats as they sail the shipping channel. Marine engines are felt as much in the chest as in the ears. Slowly each slides from view. Keep still though, so as not to frighten the sparrows. 

Sparrows, and softly breaking waves, and humming boats, and time in a coastal edgeland space, and no interruptions, might be good for a bit of thinking. That kind of thinking best done without notes. Without words or screens, prompts or lists. And without talking. Flow time thinking where thoughts and ideas and worries and inspirations surge, and break, and wash, and dissolve, just like the waves. 

* Happy New Year! Episode 251 is our first for 2025.

For Christmas Eve we're sharing this nocturnal hour of sound landscape time captured by the Lento box in the high peaks of Derbyshire. Bare leafless trees, sighing together, in strong undulating mid-winter wind. We feel this is one of our most atmospheric overnight recordings of landscape trees. 

To far left of scene across a field there's a strip of woodland made mainly of tall established conifers. To centre of scene, stretching along a shallow ridge to the far right, trees of varying heights, beech, sycamore, elderberry, conifers. The exposed contours of this section of moorland tend to channel banks of moving air along and over the ridge, creating wonderfully spatial surges of energy that the trees convert into deep brown sound.

For listeners using headphones or Airpods, the wind in the trees is sometimes so deep it is almost a sensation more felt than heard, as it gracefully moves across the aural landscape.

* We made this recording high in the Derbyshire hills over Christmas 2023 during a period of unusually strong winter gales. There is only one overflight of the area as well that you may not even notice due to the wind. Such a quiet sky is also very unusual so near to Manchester's ringway airport.

**This is our 250th episode! Happy Christmas and thanks for listening to Radio Lento.

With the stream to our right, we headed down from the exposed uplands of West Quantoxhead and into a shallow valley. Sky whitish grey. Air still. It smelled of rich late Autumn undergrowth, and faintly of mushrooms. 

As we descended, the landscape changed. Became tucked in. Shapes of sheep shifted against dark thickets below. The grass got thicker too, and taller. And the stream got fuller, and more sonorous, with every hundred yards. Eventually we found ourselves in a completely different landscape. A watery, secluded dell.

The sheep magically disappeared. Dissolved into the thickets and behind the trees. Running down over shallow stones, the stream flowed through the dell without urgency. Its sonorous wrillings reflecting perfectly off the leafy surroundings. Bright, but not too bright. With a fresh spatialness, audibly illuminating the contours of the natural space. 

Here, set below high steep banks of dense undergrowth, far away in the Quantocks of West Somerset, sound and time melded. Unified, into one well tempered flow. 

* The Lento box captured this scene tied to a tree during an unaccompanied overnight record in late October. We spent a long time in near total darkness testing out how different angles onto the stream sounded from various trees. We chose one set back from the stream, preferring this well balanced aural composition rather than a closer angle where the noise of the stream would drown out the subtle acoustic reflections of the space itself. The ambient sound levels were incredibly low. Listening back, we can sometimes hear the sheep, quietly moving about. After 17 minutes into the segment they wonder off, leaving only the stream to be heard, and the passing of time, in this natural secluded place. 

Kilve beach is edged by sheer cliffs and is made of rocks. Mostly small ones the size of oranges, up to medium sized ones the size of sofa cushions. To cross over them is unstable and you have to move like a penguin, which must be fun to watch if you aren't the one trying to stay upright. Jutting up between the smaller rocks are huge mattress sized boulders that are either massive flat topped rocks of unimaginable weight, or maybe if you could look below have no underside at all because they are the exposed surface of the Earth's crust. They make excellent resting points where you can temporarily stop from awkward walking and admire the amazing view.

Having progressed some way along the beach we reached a smooth ridge of rock that ran for a long stretch perpendicular to the sea. It afforded us a path to walk on for a while. Either side of the ridge pools of stranded seawater had gathered beside piles of tangled seaweed. The atmosphere at this point had softened considerably, and there was in addition to being able to hear the sea a kind of silence too, immediately around us, so pure you could hear tiny bubbles popping in the rock pools. 

It had something to do  with the rock cliffs of Kilve. They were doing something interesting. Cupping and reflecting sound, acting like the back wall of a theatre. Ahead the shoreline, though only about fifty yards away, was below the sound horizon owing to a very steep rake on the beach. This has the effect of mellowing the breaking waves, emphasising the weight of the waves rather than the brightness of the turbulent water. Occasionally a seventh wave breaks over a rocky outcrop directly centre of scene sending a plume of foaming suds high into the air and for a few moments above the sound horizon. 

* Far left of scene you can sometimes hear children playing on the beach with their dad, maybe looking for fossils. Some hardy birds that make a peeping call swoop around too. As the episode opens a tiny microlight aeroplane crosses the sky from left to right, going almost directly overhead. For some reason we love this sound, it seems to reflect that free feeling you get on a wide open beach. You may notice the tide is very gradually coming in over the episode, yielding more splashes and watery details from the breaking waves as time progresses. 

This is segment II from a 6-hour sound capture we took earlier this year at Kielder Forest in Northumberland. Recorded in spring, the environment is rich with birdsong, mainly willow warblers whose song is a short and very cheerful descending scale. We'd been walking along one of the rough paths that thread through the forest below the Kielder Observatory and had found exactly what we'd travelled up to this specific area to record. The hushing sound of wind in tall fir trees. 

Of course these are no ordinary trees. They are Grandis Firs. Vertically vast. Each the size of a 15 storey tower block, with huge drooping boughs draped in billions of tiny pine needles. Every needle catches in the wind and converts the energy into audible sound. Individually it's hard to imagine one could hear anything produced from one needle at all, but heard altogether, the sound is powerful. Deeply moving. Akin even to a spiritual experience. After finding a suitable tree to rest the Lento box against, we left it behind in the forest to record the scene alone, hoping the wind would not die down. 

The wind continued to blow in slow undulating waves. And the willow warblers continued to sing their lovely droopy songs, no doubt perched on the droopy boughs of the giant firs. But the trees and the birds were not the only aural presences in this part of the forest. There's a rushing stream, flowing from left to right of scene. It issues its own fresh bright sound to the interior space of the forest, as it rushes down into the valley to join the city-sized reservoir below. 

* At 18 minutes into this segment a plane flies over, but don't worry, it's relatively soft and gentle, flying high up above the clouds. It may initially be hard to tell whether the white noise is from the stream or wind in the firs in this recording. Over time, and as your ears adjust to the aural environment, the distinct qualities of the stream and the wind in the firs may resolve out. Both are highly spatial and texturally different. They often blend into one another, then part, like vails woven from different fabrics, billowing together in currents of air.

** Follow us on Bluesky or Ko-fi to keep up with Lento news. We recently celebrated a big Lento milestone!

Turn right off the towpath beside the Military Canal, cross the footbridge, locate the stile that leads onto the hill, then follow the rough footpath up into some impressive edgeland. It's rough. Grassy. Very thistly. And as you ascend it feels hard. Increasingly wild. It's somewhere up here, we say, striding firm against the gradient. But the thing's not marked on the map.  

The Sound Mirror of Hythe is a large concrete parabolic dish. A giant ear, pointed out to sea, designed a hundred years ago, pre-RADAR for the early detection of incoming aircraft. Surely, we puff, a structure like this must stand out like a sore thumb? Well no. The steep ground has twists and folds. Ridges and bends that have to be walked. And no military installation worth its salt, however obsolete, is or should ever be easy to find. 

We eventually see huddled low in the grass a squat blockhouse. A derelict radio receiving station, according to one historical website. Then we see the dish itself. A concrete shape, nestled against a steep bank, sadly now in a terrible state, trees growing up through its collapsing sections. Up close the dish is behind substantial chainwire fencing and surrounded by what amounts to a moat of evil shoulder high stinging nettles. Whatever evidence there may be of the 'listening chamber' said to reside at the foot of the structure, is not possible to see. It may indeed be buried under broken concrete. 

We stood for a long time. Taking it all in. Despite its state, this dish is still active. Still reflecting and to some extent shaping the aural soundscape around it. Of course only from the listening chamber could one be an ear witness to what this structure was properly designed to do, but knowing that on some level it is still working, still channeling the soundscape from the sky above the sea, is, in a quiet way, thrilling.

We found some shelter for the Lento box behind the radio receiving station, angling its view up the hill to capture both the near and far soundscapes. Near, wild wind whips through the edgeland grasses, a few crickets are cricketing. Mid-distance left, the sound mirror, about 40 yards. You can hear the wind when it catches in the trees growing in and around the dish and sometimes a yellowhammer. Right of scene is the hill rolling down into the valley. At the bottom the military canal. What filters in from behind the Lento box is from the coast and the ocean view. Toot toot of the steam railway that runs from Hythe, Dymchurch, Romney and Dungeness. Occasional distant echoes from circling seagulls and a construction site. Listening back we think some of these sounds at least are being reflected off the dish itself. 

Here's an account of our time at the Hythe Sound Mirror with lots of photos. 

It was late. Everybody had gone to bed. The remote cottage where we were staying in the Quantock Hills still felt warm, even though the oil burner had knocked itself off a while ago. Despite this, the place had started to feel, well, a bit strange and I wasn't quite sure what the feeling was. 

I put the kettle on and the strange feeling went away. I made the tea, set the kettle back on its stand, stirred the pot, replaced the lid, forgot about the feeling. But then it was back. Intriguing. 

I stepped up out of the kitchen into the back porch where the burner room emitted a faint electrical hum and a rich smell of heating oil. Was it coming from in here? No. The snug lounge then. No. It was coming from behind where I'd just been, the back porch. I stood, stock still. Listening. 

The feeling was real. It was the presence of something. Not a thing or a spirit or anything like that. It was space. The feeling was of the hint of a space beyond the confines of the cottage. My hand went to the latch of the little back door. One bolt. Another. A chain too, all needing undoing. I lent back my weight and the door eased. With a woody squeak it jerked free from its jam. 

Swinging the door gently open, I stepped out. And there it was. The raw source of the feeling. The space that I had somehow sensed was enveloping the cosy and near silent cottage. A whole landscape. Audible by its near trees and far contours. Aural presences, stretching from the back door over miles up into the Quantocks. A night world shrouded in almost complete darkness, brushed by rain, and autumnal wind. This was the moment. This is what I heard. 

We found this quiet place in West Somerset. Afternoon waves softly breaking along a rocky beach under October sunshine. The low landscape of Wales visible across the water.

Lilstock. A port in bygone times, according to someone we met coming the other way. Now disused. A landscape of stony footpaths. Dense patches of shrubbery around outcrops of trees. Endless meadows and dry ditches. Fresh water streams and in the far distance on the clifftops, the boxy structures and cranes of Hinkley Point. 

Human made sound was present but what really drew our ears were the long periods of near pristine quiet. Quiet lets the aural detail of natural landscapes be truly seen. Here, a beach not of sand or shingle, but of piles of rocks and small boulders. We tied the Lento box to a tree off the footpath about thirty yards from the shoreline, and left it to record the breaking waves alone. A little cricket was cricketing in the grass to the left of the mics. For late October we were surprised.

As we walked away we saw a large plastic blue barrel, captured by high tide rocks, roll its way loose and into the water. Then we watched it for a while set sail in the onshore breeze whilst exploring the rocks and boulders in the fresh afternoon air. When we returned an hour or so later to collect the Lento box we could still see the barrel. It'd floated up the coast past the mics. Listening back to the recording we could  picture it, moving with the waves, from left to right of scene. One empty barrel that'd taken itself to sea, for a slow, silent voyage.

* Let us know if you think this episode is sleep safe. We know there are sounds of people (mainly us) playing distantly on the beach and for some this sense of the presence of people may feel sleep safe, but others perhaps not. 

It isn't often we hear strange calls coming out of our long overnight captures, but this was one. The dead of night deep in the Forest of Dean, and a call that from the quiet emptiness begins to echo. Human?  Dog?  Muntjac deer? All three, or none? Muntjac deer are commonly heard repeating a single harsh bark across rural landscapes at night though this sound doesn't quite match the sound signature of muntjac, nor indeed dog, or human. The calling persists over ten minutes, seemingly human, then changing into something very much not human. What it is we can't know. 

The sound comes from mid-left of scene. Whatever is making it is some distance from the microphones, which are tethered to the trunk of a huge oak tree growing beside a trickling brook hidden beneath dense undergrowth. To mid-right of scene is a country road that bisects the forest. Nocturnal cars occasionally speed through. The effect is curious, like a sudden wind is gathering in the trees, only to just as suddenly disappear. As the calling continues a tawny owl joins in. It hoots in that nervous kind of way they do sometimes, but then changes. Becomes a wavering quivering bleat, something like a new born lamb. It is fleeting. Then it is gone. 

Building ideas of what is in the world around us from this kind of highly spatial binaural soundscape, especially from times and locations few of us are used to being within, can lead our imaginations into strange places. Notions of the supernatural. Happenings and occurrences beyond the normal boundaries. However to the eye, and if it weren't pitch dark, the scene would bear no comparison to what the mind perceives of this forest through hearing. There'd be no overwhelming sense of wide open space, no possibility of reverberances or echoes or happenings going on far away. Indeed no concept of distance at all. This is because what surrounds the oak tree is of course more trees. Lovely huge trees, draped in broad waxy leaves so green and so numerous the eye simply accepts the image as one vast surface of textured colour. A vail. The green vails make this huge forest place, from an eye-s perspective, just what is close. A walled garden. Safe, because it is completely hidden from view. 

These very different perspectives of the same place reveal how hearing and sight fulfill substantially different roles when we are immersed in natural places. The hearing and sight we have was evolved in forest environments over millions of years. Within a world of green vails and visually obstructed views, sound travels freely, passes through leaves and around the solid structures of trees. Sound is spatial as sight is, has depth, width, and many other spatially sensitive qualities. It affords us with detailed information we need to gain a three dimensional spatial image of the world beyond what we can see. These complex interleaved vibrations land on our eardrums and are modelled spatially to alert us to the presence of things, what they are doing, and their location in space. But what sound also does, and what we as Lento are most intrigued to capture, is to convey and confirm to a vigilant mind that nothing is also happening. Not nothing as in silence. Instead, it is that sweet, soft, murmurating texture of half meaningful sound, like billowing fabrics, that simply say yes, the world is all there. 

* This segment is from a 72 hour non-stop recording we made in May 2022 in the Forest of Dean. After the callings and the owls are gone, a little creature can be heard scuffling and making tiny quivering tweeting sounds as it goes. Soft planes pass over this area, helping to dispel any notions that this strange sounding place is anything other than the familiar world we all live in.