Radio Lento podcast

It is 3am. At the water's edge, the shadows are thick. A single star reflects in the ink black water, bobbed by passing ripples. The wide-open waterscape is alive with the sound of birds, swimming and calling, drippling the surface of the water for food, cleaning their wings, landing and taking off. Something creeps through the foliage nearby, perhaps a swan in search of a place to settle. The air...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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,...

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. Abou...

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...

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...

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.

On a warm breezy walk in the Essex countryside, we left the microphones in a tree at the top of a rarely used bridleway to record the sound of the wind. The tree was one of an outcrop that lines fields of barley and home to a robin. High above the fields are skylarks, not a common sound these days. In the distance there's the odd ice cream van too in the Lea Valley Park. It's a lovely spot to get...

On-shore wind cuffing at the ears, breakers hauling at pebble banks, walking over shingle ridges to greet the incoming tide. Soft sands, waves retreating leave fizzing foam to dissolve over seaweed at the strandline. Wading ankle deep in warm lazy seawater rippled into dizzying motion by the breeze. Heavy waves lug at the quayside wall clicking with barnacles. Five scenes: 1. Rye Harbour England....

The crickets the wind in the trees make the softness of this wood. This is the hour up to 11pm. Starts with 10 minutes of a loud muntjac deer barking very close to the microphones. Owls in the distance follow and creatures creeping about. Two distinct gun shots at 15m 30s. At 30m 24s a pheasant scared calls out very loudly. The peace returns for the remainder. The church clock chimes 11 near the e...

In a remote spot just below the Kerry Ridgeway in Powys Mid-Wales, where a stream runs along the bottom of a wooded gully beside a country road, lies some rural peace and tranquillity, and what must be the murmurs of the Ridgway, voiced in the trees. The Ridgway is an ancient trading route between Wales and England that never drops below 1000 feet. Recorded on a sunny afternoon in April 2019, catc...

In a remote spot just below the Kerry Ridgeway in Powys Mid-Wales, where a stream runs along the bottom of a wooded gully beside a country road, lies some rural peace and tranquillity, and what must be the murmurs of the Ridgway, voiced in the trees. The Ridgway is an ancient trading route between Wales and England that never drops below 1000 feet. Recorded on a sunny afternoon last April catch th...

Experience the mesmerising sound of the world passing by, recorded from outside and inside a couchette on a SNCF sleeper train one August night. Departure is from Paris Austerlitz just before 11pm. The train journeys through the night and takes 12 hours to get all the way across France to reach Port Bou in Spain. Hear the announcements and the train pausing in the early hours of the morning at Tou...

June 2016. A summer thunderstorm is passing over North East London. The atmosphere is electric. It's the final hour of polling in the referendum to decide whether the UK remains or leaves the European Union.   Sheltering under a large umbrella in the back garden of our little terrace house, listening for the next roll of thunder. Long expectant gaps. Sharp pin prick drops landing in hundreds as br...

An hour of pure immersive peace and quiet from that spot in the wood where nobody goes. This surround audio recording is unedited and just as it happened. Underneath the trees hear crickets, aircraft gently passing far above and the parish church chimes 10pm towards the end. Muntjac deer trot about and one begins to loudly call across the wood at the end. 

This time of year the sparsely wooded hills just above the now infamous Todbrook Reservoir in Whaley Bridge Derbyshire resound with the dawn chorus. Thrushes, wrens, robins amongst many other types of birds and a woodpecker and from a nearby farm the cockerel announces the arrival of a new day. Steep grass moorland, grazing sheep within gritstone walls slope down the valley towards the reservoir.

With some very loud thunderclaps this spring storm passes over the back garden. Sheltering in an old shed beside a high wall. The rain eases off and the birds keep singing happily. Towards the end an explosive thunderclap sets off a car alarm. Recorded a few years ago in binaural audio the garden is situated in Handsworth Wood Birmingham and sounds most realistic on headphones or earbuds.

It is just after half past eight in the evening in the Suffolk wood. The sun is setting. It is dusk, very warm and dry with light breezes. There are no people about. The A12, about four miles away provides a reliable hum. Aeroplanes lazily arc overhead. Crickets chirp, leaves move in the breeze, what may be muntjac deer creeps about. Listen out for the distant bell of St Marys Church, it can be he...

Walking along a cliff path lined with crickets the sea appears, steep down to the right. There's no one around. There's time to listen. There's a dot on the horizon, a boat. Hardly moving. At 6m30s we move to a different location - down a flinty path and over deep sand to the water's edge. The water fizzes. Is the tide coming in, or out? At 13m45s, back up on the cliff path, warm grassy wafts and...

Hearing London at night from a small patch of grass bordered by shrubs, flowering plants and a bay tree, a typical garden in Hackney enclosed within old brick-built walls. Just before 3am distant machines began to fill the air with gentle undulating washes of sound. The effect is pleasantly soporific. It's a wide landscape recording and quite delicate, best through headphones or on speakers when e...

At the bottom of a steep-sided thickly wooded and uninhabited valley in the rural county of Derbyshire, England, this babbling brook fills the night air with its watery melodies. In this recording made in early summer, the occasional pair of owls can be heard, and what might be creatures flitting in the shallow water. It's an unedited recording of a real place, part of a 14 hour non-stop take to c...