Sound from a Town

The electrical hums, mechanical whirs and cavernous clatters of Euston station platform is the sound bookending a journey to or from London. You're often out of it far too quick, though, either to sit on the train where these sounds are cushioned, or into the waiting area full of the sounds of human chatter, heels at a canter, the clacking of suitcase wheels, and the piped announcements. On Saturd...

The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, designed by Thomas Telford is the highest canal aqueduct in the world. If you're not sure if you're scared of heights or susceptible to height vertigo, it's a good place to find out.  I got speaking to a lovely man walking his dog whilst recording this. He told me that the arches were built around bales of sheep wool to keep the weight of the 38 metre high arches down as...

Dibbinsdale is a site of special scientific interest near Bromborough on the Wirral, cradling the river Dibbin passing through. I arrived at around 4am and set up, having never been before. With it being ancient woodland, I was expecting to hear weird and wonderful birds for this dawn chorus – almost as if stepping into a time machine. This was most likely ignorance on my part, as I was instead me...

There's a Pentecostal Church on the Westminster - one of Ellesmere Port's suburbs - that backs onto a motorway sliproad. The sliproad was opened in 1972 to join up with the M53, a motorway that ran right through the middle of the Westminster and cut the community in two. I'm not sure what this cemetary would have sounded like on a Sunday before the M53 was built, but I imagine the low drone of err...

This recording is bookended and criss-crossed by two different journeys. At the start, a train passes directly under the bridge, and at the end, a person walks a bike across it. Listening with headphones gives the latter a very eery quality - listening back the first time I had to look over my shoulder.  The iron bridge in question is between Overpool and Little Sutton train stations on the Mersey...

We're in Stamford Street allotments in Ellesmere Port again, this time on the first warm Saturday of the year. Before heading out I saw a bubmlebee out of the window, which I saw as a good omen and sign that everything's coming back to life after winter. The allotment was quiet, though, so perhaps everyone needs a couple more weeks to fully resurface. You do get to listen to activity on two plots,...

Here we meet Christine, who spends most weekends protesting the ongoing genocide in Gaza from Hebden Bridge town centre. Christine was also one of the Greenham Women, who protested the arrival of nuclear cruise missiles to Berkshire from 1981 - 2000.     

Before paying keyboard and harminica for the brilliant Ellesmere Port band Oranj Son, Joe Massey took to the stage at The Bull's Head, a flat-roof institution, to perform renditions of Bach's Prelude in C Minor and Mozart's Sonata in F Major.   Recorded on 14th September 2024 with a Zoom H6.      

The first part of a series of recordings around Hebden Bridge. In this episode you can hear from Chris, who helps run a workers' co-op in the town.    Recorded on the 27th January 2024.   

Due to the weather being too trecherous to go anywhere else, here is a recording from a back garden of a subdued dawn chorus smattered with clumps of thawing snow falling from trees.    The sound was captured from Meols, on the Wirral. Meaning 'sand dunes' in Nordic, Meols was once a settlement for Vikings and Romans. These days, the sleepy little coastal village is little more than somewhere to r...

Spend some time with some chill chickens from Stamford Street allotments in Ellesmere Port. Clipped the mics to the chicken wire roof and left them for 30 mins. There may be standard background chat, the sound of planes, strimmers, cars, doors and windows closing or other suburban sounds, but the occasional cluck, trill, wing flap or the sound of the feeder helps to position you properly amongst t...

A recording of dawn chorus on Ince Marshes. The protected nature reserve sits in the Stanlow marshland now occupied by heavy industry. Some of the heaviest - oil refineries, chemical plants, glass factories.  As I arrived, as well as the familiar orange hue felting itself to the cloud cover above the oil refinery, what struck me was the noise of the Encirc glass factory dominating the soundscape o...

Apparently the most beautiful service station in the country. On the M6, Tebay offers artisan food, drinks, bits and bobs, and is set back from the motorway with views of the Lake District. This hark to nature, with products inside adorned with earthly tones, is situated in stark contrast to the greyscale tarmac, blue shiny signs and white and red scintillations of motorways.

Recorded at the National Waterways Museum, Ellesmere Port. I used the Lom Geofon attached directly to the engine, giving it a nice low burbling sound, and combined this with a single Clippy EM272 positioned quite close to give a decent crispness. 

This episode was recorded just outside BAE systems in Govan, Glasgow, on a quiet, unassuming - but slightly windy - residential street.  The day before I recorded, people protested outside to try and stop the manufacture and sale of weapons and other military technology by the British Company. BAE make Machines, bombs, and computerised hardware and software built with the aim of surveilling or kil...

It's 12:45 and 22 degrees on the 13th May. It doesn't seem that warm when you read it like that, but you and your mate have been walking around with your luggage for the best part of an hour, hungry, waiting to stumble on the perfect place to have the final proper meal in Barcelona. After walking past a couple of places that don't seem quite right, you spot two seats in dappled sunlight that becko...

Stopped to record the sound of cars heard through the echoic Clyde Tunnel Walkway. Decided to bring out the Lom Geofón to record the reverberations through the metal railings, adding a lovely tense drone. Recorded in 3 different locations and mixed together.    www.georgepowell.online

A mixture of a walkabout, asking fans their first memories and how they feel about Klopp leaving, as well as catching the singing of You'll Never Walk Alone at the start of the match.

Recorded binaurally in a Morrisons Car Wash in Eccles. Headphones highly recommended. 'Take 5' episodes are short and to the point: sit down, close your eyes, and imagine you're somewhere else for a bit. Picture copyright Google 2023. 

Recording at the Ballachulish Slate Quarry, in the Scottish Highlands, on Sunday 5th May 2024.  

Apparently the Pendleton Bowling and Social Club shut down not long after a pandemic, after the owners couldn't raise funds to keep it going. I used to live opposite, well after it shut, and with no other properly social venue within a 30 minute walk, even I missed this place. Kids run about in here, climb on the ledge outside, and chuck things at stuff. That's until a parent finds them and drags...

I took the long route to Derwent Dam, walking south down the Ladybower Reservoir, then along the sheep fields on Crook Hill and beyond, and back to the Dam via Hagg Side, recording bits as I went, and ending on a recording of the overflowing dam. Like most rushing water, it's very white-noisey, which I quite like. Derwent Dam was built in 1902, and the reservoir was used for practising Dambusters...

From Cooper's Hill in Egham I recorded the mixture of birds and planes. I didn't edit too much, as I wanted the 'natural' rhythm of the planes to be close to what it was on the day. The loudest planes are those that head east after takeoff due to them turning and heading pretty much overhead.  Used 2xClippys and an Audio Technica BP4025 as I find the Audio Technica gives the tones I want for recor...

Recorded at Alexandra Palace. Swapped places once while I was there. If you listen carefully, you can hear the screech of - I think - a hawk amongst the more common birds.   Recorded on 24th March, 05:30.   www.georgepowell.online  

I recorded a bunch of sounds from different levels of the spiral starcase in the Feldstraße Bunker back in April. What you'll listen to is a non-linear edit of these sounds to try and convey the sense that the building is a living object, which is what I felt when I was in there.  The bunker was used as a bomb shelter back in WWII, I believe. When I visited there was a load of rumbling and clangin...