Radio Lento podcast22 Apr 2023

164 Garden rain as winter turns to spring (daydream and sleep safe)

After last episode's tumultuous waves upon a dramatic shingle shoreline, this week we retire behind the secluded walls of a little garden, at the back of a small suburban terraced house, for an altogether different sound feel. The sound feel of gentle rain, falling on an empty garden, in the quiet hours, when almost everyone is asleep.

We love it this time of year as winter turns to spring. And when the weather forecast is for rain. Loads of rain, in bands, throughout the night. If we can, we may leave the back door open just before midnight for a while, to let the sound in, but the thing about rain is it does not fall to order. You have to wait for it to come, and that can mean hours. Witnessing the falling of the rain is something that can be done by setting up spatial mics to record, all night, and then listen back, to experience the passages of time when the rain did finally come.

At the edge of our yard, beside a patch of old raspberry canes, there's a perfect spot where the aural presence of the garden can be heard evenly balanced. The acoustic 'presence' that arises from its physical shape and reflective surfaces, clear. All the upturned half propped up things, evenly spread. Some overhead shelter, centrally positioned. Its where we post the mics, on a tripod, so they can hear everything, evenly. Hear, for us and everyone who couldn't be there to witness it, the delicate sound and changing ambiences, of rain, falling. And when we did listen back, we heard not only the rain, but a nocturnal robin, somewhere far off in another garden, singing, as they do this time of year, in glorious solitude, in the dead of night.

------------------

Love listening to Radio Lento? You can support us here.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

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