Radio Lento podcast19 Mar 2022

111 Soundscenes of estuary rain

For this week's episode we head back to the rugged seawall below Burnham-on-Crouch, to witness the sound of summer rain as it falls onto inland tidal water. We've not actually listened back to this audio before, and preparing it has been a labour of love. Labour, because the hundreds of rain drops that hit the lid of our microphone box have had to be individually treated to volume match all the other rain drops! Of love, because each hour we spent doing this, has been another hour spent immersed, within this truly wild and evocative place. And given these troubled times, it's made for some pure and simple escapism that's just so needed.

Daylight has come, and from left to right, the pattering of rain melds with the cries of estuary birds. Redshank, gulls, curlew. Tidal flows come and go, swirling and swilling, over the concrete blocks that form the seawall. Distant signs of habitation waft in from the west (hard right of the soundview), while from the east (left), nothing but the natural world. Well almost, there are a few soft passing planes, flying inland from the North Sea. Somewhere high. Somewhere beyond the deep, grey clouds.

We were able to capture this passage of time in August last year, by leaving our microphones alone to record from evening, through the night, and into the morning of the next day. When we retrieved the kit, everything was unsurprisingly soaked and wringing wet. Amazingly though, while the electronics inside the box had got wet too, the kit was still recording!

We hope the captured sound of time passing beside these wild and open tidal waters may bring you some relief, as it has us, during this difficult and most taxing of times.

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Episoder(300)

301 Tide turned on the causeway (sleep safe)

A soundscene of an island. Asleep. Between the tides. This passage of time is from a 2025 recording the Lento box made in Bigbury-on-Sea, tied to a palm tree facing onto the beach and out towards the ...

2 Sep 1h 2min

300 Suffolk maize field in coastal breezes

As the land bakes under the hot August sun, the heat rises and so draws cooler air in from over the sea. The resulting breeze is always fresh, and can flow quite strongly even when it isn't windy anyw...

13 Aug 55min

299 Owls of Big Wood (sleep safe with owls)

Night woodland. Sonorous owls. Soft nocturnal breezes catching high in the broad-leafed trees. A panoramic woodland in spatial sound, collected by the Lento box alone. Always so fascinating to us is h...

14 Jul 50min

298 Thunderstorm over sonorous rural woodland (warning - sudden shock thunderclaps)

Last month on the evening of 26 May a huge lightning storm centred over a remote wooded area on the Leicestershire-Rutland border where we had left the Lento box alone to record. From where we were st...

20 Jun 1h 32min

297 Sonorous rural woodland before an approaching storm

Last week we took the Lento box to capture the natural soundscapes of rural Leicestershire and Rutland. Our visit coincided with the warmest May temperatures on record and as it turned out the most po...

2 Jun 1h 1min

296 Looking out on Portland Harbour part 2

Here beneath the tree again, at the water's edge. Looking out on Portland Harbour. Left of scene the sunlit parapets of Nothe Fort. Ahead the flat sun-drenched sea, with lazy waves rolling in over hal...

11 Mai 44min

295 Low tide on the causeway - part II (sleep safe with occasional herring gulls and oyster catchers)

A soundscene, of an island. Asleep. Between the tides. About this time last year we visited Burgh Island in Devon on the south west coast of England. We made two long-form overnight recordings while w...

16 Apr 1h 1min

294 Dawn in Shelve Wood Shropshire with cuckoo

The moment we entered Shelve Wood we knew it was a perfect place to record. Shropshire is sparsely populated. There's only one B road in the Shelve Wood area. The country lanes carry little traffic, a...

21 Mar 1h 1min