Radio Lento podcast16 Jan 2021

50 Singing beck below Black Hill (sleep safe)

High on a Derbyshire moor below the summit of Black Hill, between Disley and Whaley Bridge, there's an ancient trackway. It runs almost level across boggy ground with views over rough pastures and gritstone walls to a lone standing stone. After about half a mile the track descends sharply into a tree-lined dell. Nestled in amongst a wood, there's a small farmhouse mostly hidden from view. It was, more than a lifetime ago, in 1898 the home of Carl Fuchs, a distinguished cellist, who played in the Halle Orchestra and the Brodsky quartet. At the point where the gorse bushes are, where the path narrows and sinks below the gritstone walls, and the deep ruts get deeper, the traveller hears water. A babbling beck, waiting to cast its spell. A sonorous moorside stream that has to be forded, on tip toe, over exposed rocks. In his memoir, Carl Fuchs when working in the stream, once told travellers that the water was safe to drink. Clear, and from the mountain. Being within a natural cutting, overgrown with straggly trees, its sound is amplified. Shaped by the action of water over rocks, and conducted by gravity, the beck rills the air, as it has for centuries. The deep rocky pool into which the water tumbles, sings watery notes. Colourful, resonant, vibrant. We pushed through the undergrowth and left the microphones to record overnight, downstream of the pool. Time passes. Tiny flurries of rain fall onto the sheltering leaves. The beck flows mellifluously, down and away into the wide open valley to the right. The vastness is sometimes revealed by a passing plane, or a car on a distant road. The birds are asleep. Nocturnal things hold their silence. The beck casts its spell.

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Avsnitt(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 Juli 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 Juni 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 Juni 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 Maj 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 Mars 1h 1min