Radio Lento podcast16 Jun 2025

272 Emptiness within Shelve Wood at night (sleep safe)

Experiencing the spatial sense of emptiness, in a natural place, when there's nobody about, endlessly fascinates us. We built a high resolution immersive sound capture device to study it. We find natural places to leave it out recording alone, to capture quiet scenes in sound. Of time passing.

We are all intrinsically hyper-attentive to the possible presence of people within our surroundings. Any movement that might signal another person in the vicinity, fundamentally changes our thoughts. It deflects our mind's eye from fully connecting with the place. This is why we always set out to record in largely uninhabited locations that are good sources of naturally occurring sound.

Before Lento came about, the question of whether or not a falling tree makes a sound when there's no one around to hear it, proved puzzlingly difficult to argue in classroom discussions. If only we could send back in time this sound-scene of Shelve Wood in Shropshire, that we recorded last month. Yes, remote listening is a thing. Be there and yet not be there to hear the trees. Slow banks of shifting air, brushing softly, panoramically, through the firs. And every drop of rain, that finds its way down, between the branches, to land on the soft dry carpet of the forest floor. Shelve Wood has an acoustic that conveys space. A vast space. It is a space that, especially at night, murmerates with deep, velvety echoes. Hushes. Thousands of conifers and spruce, moving together, in natural sympathy with the wind.

* This section of time is from a 12-hour overnight recording we made last month in beautiful Shropshire. The fir tree that held the Lento box was impressively tall, and peaceful.

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Episoder(300)

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

293 Pools of Rye Harbour (sleep safe)

The Lento box records alone, tied to a tree, behind thickets of gorse. The night hours pass. The microphones capture the panoramic peace of this wild coastal landscape. Rye Harbour Nature Reserve on t...

2 Mar 1h

292 Moorland trees in December gales - Derbyshire (sleep safe after owls at start)

Exposed moorland trees create a strong natural source of undulating white noise when shouldering the brunt of a winter gale. The sounds they produce are uniquely enchanting and an absolute delight to...

12 Feb 1h

291 High tide turning - the Crouch Estuary in Essex (sleep safe)

The waves settle into wavelets. The wavelets settle to calm. Then it's just the pure sound of estuary emptiness, at night. Following on from episode 288 it's several hours later, about 4 in the mornin...

1 Feb 49min