213 Sound-scenes we love from four years of Lento

Today marks four years of Radio Lento! We launched on 29 March 2020. Since then, a hundred and forty hours of material shared. Hundreds of thousands of ad-free and cost-free downloads. Long-form audio recordings. Of natural and empty places. In high precision spacious sound. Real aural essences of what it is to be present and immersed in a real place.

We've not missed a week since March 2020. Rural and country places. Coastal and tidal places. Edgelands. Brutal landscapes. Sonorous interior spaces. In wind and rain. Under the forces of nature. Broad daylight and the dead of night. We're interested not in any particular thing, but in the sound of every thing. In soundscapes that are most often not experienced. Because they seem empty. Places where nothing seems to be happening. Places filled with the delicate and the subtle. The soft, and the fragile. Aural environments that only through focusing over time, form in the mind's eye of the listener.

Four years of producing Lento and we do still struggle to explain to people what Lento is. Is it mindfulness? Well, it could be, but we aren't really thinking of that when we make the recordings. Is it nature? Not specifically. Is it an experimental podcast? We are definitely not experimenting. Perhaps the ordinary, the everyday, the subtle, the long-form, is just too off the beaten track. We add that Lento is slow growing, but that we do get quite a lot of good feedback. They often say why don't you do a marketing plan? We say we can't really make one because the value of the material is in the the listeners heads not ours. They say you could combine it with someone doing guided meditation. We explain that any talking at all would ruin Lento. And they ask how do people know how to listen to it? And we say they just have to work it out for themselves. And they don't say anything. And we stare at each other.

And after a few moments of thought they say your pod sounds amazing. And we ask if they have listened to it? And they say they will. And we explain it's harder than it seems to capture real authentic quiet, properly, because the places we can get to are almost always scattered with human made noise but when we do practice patience, quiet does eventually come, and that really makes each recording. And they seem to be thinking about it, but not know what to say next. And then we talk about something else. And we hope they might try listening, in a quiet place of course, with a pair of headphones or ear pods, so they can hear the captured quiet properly.

In this special edition to mark four years we retrace our steps through six 10 minute segments from these episodes:

17 Dusk in the Forest of Dean 26 Delicate sifting waves at Felixstowe Ferry 139 A passing storm from the attic of an old house 128 Persistent rain at night in an urban garden 192 Spring wildlife on the Hoo Peninsula, Kent 136 Ocean breakers near St Abbs on the east coast of Scotland

Listen to each episode in full via our blog.

Our grateful thanks to everyone who listens and supports Lento.