Radio Lento podcast

In winter gales amongst moorland trees at night. Dark sky. Empty of everything, except for the invisible moving wind. A moor slopes steep up to the right. And half a mile of grassland slopes gently away down the valley, to the left. At the bottom, is a reservoir, hidden behind more trees. This grassy spot along a high gritstone wall, near an old iron gate, looks from the lane like

You're not alone here, in this seaside town. A place of hot pasties, hot cups of tea, and families on a day out. A place of rolling Atlantic waves. This is East Looe on the coast of Cornwall. Thick grey sky. April cold. A sprinkling of rain, But shut your eyes, and it could be summer. Find a good spot on the sand. You may need to move once or twice. Be guided by your ears. Then chu

A fresh Cornish spring day last week, along the West Looe River valley. Hear an area of ancient woodland. Described as the lungs of Looe. It's Cornish rainforest. Trees, that go back in time, farther than we can imagine. Walk inland, with the river to your right. Soon it'll be endless oaks, trunks covered with moss, all around you. As far as the eye can see. Ahead, where the muddy

A birds ear view over Plymouth in the far south west of England. Plymouth in a fast gusting storm. Storm Kathleen. This is how it sounded from behind the huge plate glass window of a comfortable cushioned room on the fourth floor of a hotel the night before last. The hotel overlooks a district called The Hoe, where one of the original Eddystone Lighthouses now stands. We climbed Se

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

In late December 2020 we were given permission to make a long form landscape recording of Abney Park nature reserve in north east London. Abney Park is an area of long established woodland, surrounded by busy streets and major roads carrying traffic in and out of central London. It's an oasis of tranquility used by locals to escape from urban living, that very convincingly does loo

Nothe Fort in Weymouth, on the Dorset coast. An old sea fort that celebrated its 150th birthday in 2022. For most of these years, it has been able to stand, looking out to the sea around Portland, amidst pristine clear night silence. Against the velvety quiet, tidal water ebbs and flows, rises and falls, swells and recedes, softly, around semi-submerged rocks. It's water that has a

Everything sounds different in the night. Close things sound sharper. More precise. That which is farther away, sounds larger, though it is still farther away. The sound image of the night, is curiously paradoxical. And yet in an evolutionary way, it is the night context where our hearing may have fundamentally developed to fulfill its primary role. Here we're back for a second tim

Here, take a seat on the bank. There's nobody about. Just you and the stream. And the birds of course. Cast your eyes around. Take it all in, before you get comfortable. Steep meadows all about, sloping down into this water meadow. With just you in it and a hazel tree, laden with catkins. No wonder this water's running so fast. There's been so much rain. In one month, more than any

You can imagine them. The telegraph poles. The long line of them that stand along the Creel Path, on the east coast of Scotland. The thousand year old, empty Creel Path, that provides an ancient way between Coldingham and St Abbs. Imagine them now it's night. The deserted path. Jutting up into the deep dark sky. Charcoal black. Standing firm against the wind. Holding the mile long