Radio Lento podcast Hugh Huddy

Time to take in a view. A panorama that changes with the wind and the tide. It's about six o'clock in the morning, and the Lento box has been recording through the night, tied to a windswept tree facing directly out towards Looe Island and the English channel.  
The scene has an aural horizon formed of disapated ocean breakers, crashing against rocks far below. Blended layers of panoramic undulating natural white, grey and brown noise. Close by, newly sprouted leaves flutter around the microphone box in fast currents of blustery air. As the gusts subside, a softer, calmer view of the headland is revealed. 
There's a fresh bracing feel to this place. Spring birds sing and call. Land birds such as chaffinches, wrens, robins, chiffchaffs and wood pigeons. Some sea birds too, herring gulls and possibly some oyster catchers. It's an exposed location. Unsheltered from the elements blowing in from the vast and empty sea. Unsheltered, and so thoroughly enlivening.

West Looe at night. A Cornish town on the edge of the English Channel. An edge where human things end and emptiness begins. We've shared a few captured sound scenes from here over the last month. This is the one if you're searching for the sound-feel of long, true night quiet.
What is true night quiet? Capturing rich and detailed audible quiet, in contrast to dead meaningless silence, is what we're always trying to do with Lento. By rich and detailed we mean those aural essences, those often very delicate sound signatures, that give a place its own sound feel, and that aren't actually created by anyone. The sound feel of a place is formed and shaped by what's in it, its geography and its weather.  
On this part of the Cornish coast we found very little human made noise during the night. No aircraft overflying. Next to nothing on the roads. Just long stretches of time where the softness of the place's sound-feel can be experienced with clarity. This episode is a section of time from around 3am in early April. A blustery weather front was blowing in from the sea, billowing along the narrow lanes of West Looe, cuffing in the roof gaps, whistling somewhere in a distant chimney pot. Fresh. Very spatial. A true and uncluttered piece of time. 
Here are our top tips about how to re-experience this captured quiet. Find a relatively peaceful spot and listen through headphones or airpods. If you have Apple Airpod Pros set the volume just over half way at about 60%. This closely matches the sound levels that would have been landing on your eardrums by actually being at the location. Volume levels do vary between headphones so we can't give reference levels for other types of ear phones. Having now tested decent noise cancellation we can say when it works it can be like turning the lights off to watch a film. Clean listening, largely free of extraneous noise. Nothing beats a quiet room with a comfortable couch though, if you have one, and a pair of velvet headphones. 

The time has come for hot sun. Hot sun and basking. Hot sun and basking, and listening to crickets. And just sitting, amongst the crickets taking it all in. 
This sound scene is of the landscape around Arley station in Shropshire. Under high trees in full leaf. Golden fields as far as the eye can see, glowing in the afternoon sun. Farmland gold. And farmland birds. Bobbing crows. Wood pigeons. And a buzzard. Distant farm machinery working the land.  Distant children playing beyond the station. Distant echoes, that roll across the horizon from a departed steam train that can be heard in episode 187.
Down the field there's a man working. Hammer and nails. Knock knock knock. From post to post he goes. Slowly repairing the fence that runs between the hedgerow and the railway line. Knock knock knock. And a rest. And a glance up, at the circling buzzard. No rush. It's hot. There's all the time in the world for this. 

It is hard to believe this is North East London at dawn. And yet it is. 5am, last Wednesday. Day break, on the 1st of May. Misted air, barely a breeze. Verdantly breathable air, filtered and cleaned by the dense surrounding woodland. When at 8am the park gates are unlocked, the people will come to walk the winding paths. Bathe in the atmosphere created by the trees. And breathe the restorative, country clean air. 
This is what a nature reserve within a city does. It purifies the air, not just for the lungs but for the ears. Layers upon layers of veteran trees soften the city rumble whilst providing a myriad of roosting spots for the songbirds to sing. And as they sing, their mellifluous sounds echo and reflect off all the boughs, branches, and countless leaves, to form an aural brilliance that is wonderful to behold. 
But behold the brilliance we rarely do. Rarely can do. 5am is not when most of us are around or want to be around. And perhaps, for the sake of the birds and their own sense of freedom in the trees that are their home, that's not such a bad thing. 5am is, shall we all agree, their time of day. Their chance to be on their own amongst their own kind. Be themselves, and be in the world, in their own particular way. Capturing an hour of this world, as it happened, and on a day when the sky was relatively free of planes and the nearby roads relatively free of traffic and sirens, is what the Lento box was there to do. Here is that hour of time, heard from behind the gates of the newly restored chapel at the heart of Abney Park nature reserve. Our special thanks to Abney Park for allowing us to capture the dawn chorus from the chapel. We recorded this episode exactly three years after our last recording just before the major restoration project started in the chapel. Listen to the dawn chorus from inside the chapel in 2021, in episode 68. And more episodes from around Abney Park here.  

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 any overgrown corner of a Peak District field. But it isn't. It isn't just any spot. It is a seat in an amphitheatre of specially arranged wind catching trees. 
Of course nobody actually set out to specially arrange these outcrops of trees like this so they'd create such a perfectly balanced and spatially panoramic scene in winter gales. They only catch the wind and turn its energy into deep and richly undulating sound because that's what trees do. But having left the Lento box in this spot to capture this long passage of time, it feels wonderful to have discovered that this exists.
Here it is. And the performance? An hour of fresh moorland air. 

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 chuck your rucksack down, lean against it with your umbrella angled so its just behind, and you'll have the perfect spot for an uninterrupted cinematic sound-view of the crashing waves. In all their crisp textural detail. And spatial glory.
Can you hear which way the longshore drift goes? Maybe not yet. It can take a few minutes. While you wait notice how there's an interesting mix of garden birds and sea birds here. A mistle thrush far left, or is it a blackbird? A wren too, far right. Beyond where the little children are playing. The waves feel powerful in this spot on the sand. Powerful, Sometimes thunderous. Coming, and going, in long swaying rhythms. Coming, and going, with wide spacious calm inbetween.