Episodes
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303 The hypnotic passage of a dredger heading up the estuary towards Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex
Here's something different to accompany this episode - an account of the aural happenings as the passage of time progresses. We collected this soundscape just east of Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex last week on a beautifully sunny late autumn afternoon. The Lento box was tied to a post facing out...
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302 Soundscenes of rolling thunder over the Pyrenees (possibly sleep safe)
Cicadas seem to go quiet when the rain sets in. They probably need to keep themselves dry to be able to make their sound. In this landscape recording we made in early August nearly all of the cicadas have stopped by about ten minutes. Then it's just the rain, and the rolling thunder, and the...
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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 island. It's the dead of night, 2am to 3am. The waves are breaking along the soft sandy beach.…
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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 anywhere else. And so this is how we found coolness yesterday and relief from the relentless sun,...
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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 how the natural world sounds at night, when there's absolutely nobody about. It's quite difficult…
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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 staying about three quarters of a mile away we could see fork lightning. We were worried that our...
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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 powerful thunderstorms we'd ever experienced. On the evening of 26 May huge storm clouds swept into...
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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 half exposed rocks. Right of scene are some small boats, tugging against their moorings. Rising and...
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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 we were there. Burgh Island is reached on-foot from Bigbury-on-Sea via a sand causeway. The…
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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, and on the day we were on-location the skies were very often empty of aircraft. These qualities…
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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 the East Sussex coast. The tree holding the mics overlooks one of the many small lakes across the...
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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 experience. For us it's the beating heart of what it is to be immersed in the great outdoors, and...
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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 morning, and the tide has finally turned along the exposed seawall opposite Wallasea Island. The...
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290 Night rain in the Pyrenees (sleep safe)
We love the ambience of Sant Llorence de la Muga, a small village high in the Pyrenees. It's a beautifully peaceful place but we know the sound of the bells every quarter are not ideal for those wanting to spend time with the rain, the open peacefulness of mountainous quiet, and the occasional...
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289 Dawn birds of rural Shropshire
Welcome back to Radio Lento and a new year of captured quiet from natural places. It's so good you are here. To open 2026 we're heading back to rural Shropshire which we visited last year thanks to a listener recommendation. We found so many perfect places on this trip in May. Remember almost…
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288 Tidal estuary at night (sleep safe with plane at 23m)
Tied to a railing, the Lento box records alone. It's about two in the morning along the river bank east of Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex. Wind is blowing inland from the east, light, gusting to moderate. Sky dark, and heavy with cloud. Huge rainclouds are approaching, currently located out over the...
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287 Dusk on Boggle Hole beach - North Yorkshire coast
The still luminous sky above the sheer rock cliffs was turning an even deeper shade of blue, as we stepped down onto the wet sand of the beach at Boggle Hole. For a moment we just had to stand. Take it all in. Wide stretches of undulating sand. Half submerged boulders like sleeping elephants....
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286 Night crickets of the Kent coast (long sleep safe + some soft overflying planes)
Capturing the sound-feel of real night quiet is special. It requires a lot of time and a location where quiet naturally occurs in more than just a fleeting way. Quiet is not silence. Silence is the absence of sound, whereas quiet happens when everything in the landscape is still audible. Just...
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285 Late October on Chesil Beach (sleep safe)
The making of this high-definition sound photograph of Chesil Beach began thanks to the number 1 bus from Weymouth to Portland. As we stepped aboard, the sky felt low. Folded and layered with grey October cloud. Rain was in the forecast so we'd taken raincoats. After twenty minutes and the final...
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284 The wind of Long Mynd
Reaching the top of Long Mynd in rural Shropshire requires a good steady climb. The rocky footpath winds up and up, and so must you, if you want to get to the top. Most people do, as much for that sense of physical achievement gained over an hour or two, as the views. 360 degree panoramic views…
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283 Night trees of Boggle Hole (sleep safe)
Robin Hood's Bay on the North Yorkshire coast feels remote for England. It lies at the bottom of a very steep road that descends down from the road between Whitby and Scarborough. The sign at the top of the village warns sightseers interested in a look not even to try driving down. With virtually...
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282 Night train to Paris (sleep safe if you like trains)
The environment within the cabin of a sleeper train is, well, unusual. Quite contradictory. It feels empty when you first step in, but full seconds later. It has a dead quiet feel, whilst also being noisy. It affords little physical space to move about in, yet anything you accidentally drop ends…
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281 Night rain in the Pyrenees (sleep safe with chimes)
Beside the only road leading out of Sant Llorenc de la Muga we found a small group of trees. We didn't have much time. The sky was pitch black and the ground beneath our feet was streaming with water that'd all come down a few minutes ago in a deluge with simultaneous flashes of forked lightening...
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280 Pyrenees thunder above watery valley
Our friends told us that in Sant Llorenc the weather changes towards the end of August. Endless days of thick summer heat gives way to something altogether more dramatic. Ominous black clouds the size of cities. Rain drops like translucent grapes. Fork lightening like you see at the cinema....
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279 Lento Long - Kielder Collection (180 minutes)
For this second August intermission we've once again brought together multiple recordings made across a location to share as one very long non-stop piece. This episode is our second ever "Lento Long". Three hours of spatial sound landscape captured from the Kielder Forest in Northumberland in the...
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278 Lento Long - Quantocks collection (180 minutes)
It's August intermission time! This year we've decided to bring together recordings from more than one location in a specific geographic area and share them as a long non-stop episode. This is our first ever "Lento Long" at 3 hours. A chance to aurally travel across a geographic area and…
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277 Emptiness within Shelve Wood at night - part II (sleep safe)
This week we're returning to Shelve Wood in Shropshire to witness another hour from the unaccompanied overnight capture we made in June. This section of time includes the effects of a strong weather front. It sweeps over the dense woodland, creating rich spatial waves of naturally occurring…
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276 First rain after drought (high definition spatial sound)
It's not often we record from the back garden. The spot is suburban. Grassy and full of tangled shrubs yes, and encircled by a sprawling wisteria too that visually at least gives a verdantly self contained feel. But foliage while beguiling the eye does not strain out the roads and street sounds…
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275 Dawn in an apple tree - Derbyshire hills
A bright April day has dawned in Derbyshire earlier in the spring. The air is unusually still for this time of year and this upland location. At just under a thousand feet barely a breeze is ruffling the trees surrounding the mics. These are the same trees that can be heard so powerfully in…
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274 Burgh Island midnight tide (sleep safe)
(pronounced Birr Island) This long, slow Devon day, is drawing softly to a close. Looking out to sea, the sky beyond has already fallen velvet black. It's midnight. Scattered lamps shine on Burgh Island. It looks from here more like a dark thicket, afloat on a vast water field. With glow worms,...
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273 Sunset fields and oak trees - spring in Shropshire
Oak trees have a very particular sound this time of year. It's to do with the leaves. Their texture, shape and contours. How they catch and filter the breeze. On a warm spring day, like this one the Lento box captured last month in rural Shropshire, you can hear the softness of the moving air...
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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...
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271 Wild breezes in the reeds - spring along the Thames Estuary
This soundscene was captured two weeks ago from a rackety wooden fence beside a grass meadow. Reeds are growing to right of scene, waving and hushing in strong gusts of spring warm wind. Centre, a view out across the meadow. Left of scene, over a rough track and an overgrown strip of marshy land…
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270 Soundscene from Northward Hill Nature Reserve featuring a nightingale
Whilst out along the Kent side of the Thames Estuary on Saturday, aiming to capture the sound of skylarks and reeds, we met a walker with a very friendly border terrier. She told us there was talk of a nightingale not too far away at RSPB's Northward Hill Nature Reserve. We aren't strictly…
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269 Night crickets distant waves - Folkestone Warren (sleep safe)
At this spot, high up on The Warren, in the dead of night, live the crickets. They're everywhere. Stridulating, like tiny minute hands etching the moments, of this night's time passing. Crisp. Unwitnessed. They're probably dark bush crickets. The Lento box records the scene alone, on a warm night...
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268 A wild ocean above ancient tree stumps
Pett in Sussex. A 'small peaceful seaside village'. Here you can visit a little timber chapel on the beach with an open door to a kitchen. You can take a seat, absorb the atmosphere, then make yourself a cup of tea if you like, choose a book from the shelves and drop your donation into the…
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267 Hidden dell at night (sleep safe)
This week we're staying on the uplands of rural Derbyshire to hear a passage of time from the dead of night. We captured it last month, from a location very near to last week's episode, About half a mile upstream, high above the valley pastures where the sheep live, hides a watery dell. It's...
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266 On upland pastures
Left of scene, a steep uninhabited valley, shrouded under dense woodland. Right of scene, rough pastures and grass meadows sloping gradually up, towards a distant horizon. Centre, a silvery glimpse of the moorland stream that's flowed down into this valley for as long as rain began to fall.…
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265 Low tide on the causeway (sleep safe)
Last week we visited Burgh Island in Devon on the south west coast of England. We made two overnight recordings, both looking out towards the island from Bigbury-on-Sea. The island is connected to the mainland by a sand causeway. This passage of time is from the second unaccompanied overnight...
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264 Garden rain at night (sleep safe)
Last summer when we were stuck at home, and when heavy rain was forecast between midnight and three, we decided it'd be nice to capture its sound. The idea is enchanting. Rain, falling, on a little suburban garden, verdant with plants and shrubs of various kinds, as they quietly and invisibly…
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263 Wild open coastal reserve
Sat back, looking onto Rye Harbour nature reserve. There, to the ear, is the sea. From here it's out of sight, somewhere below the long shingle ridge. From this point across the reserve, it could to the ear be an aural sunrise. A wall of natural energy, lighting up the horizon with clean, white,...
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262 Night stream at West Quantoxhead (sheep sleep safe)
We found our way to record this remote location late at night, and in near total darkness. A sheltered dell, with a fresh running stream. Earlier in the day, when everything was bathed in bright grey light, we'd walked through this secluded place on our way down from West Quantoxhead, and decided...
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261 Midnight in Rye
Twelve strikes the clock, of St Mary's Church in Rye, East Sussex. Midnight. A sound that for anyone left awake, opens a new page. It's a new day, captured by the Lento box perched high above the churchyard, one night in mid-February. The new day reads like this. The gnarled limb of a winter tree...
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260 Early spring in the Derbyshire hills
What a long-form sound landscape recording of the Derbyshire hills reveals, is space, weather, and birds. A buzzard. Mistle thrush. Song thrush. Great tit. Geese. Wren. Robin. Jackdaw. Pheasant. Black cap. All present in their different ways. Buffeted by strong spring breezes under grey skies....
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259 Night rain under a large tarpaulin (sleep safe)
Sometimes, when persistent rain is forecast overnight, we place the Lento box out in the back garden on a long battery to capture the sound. Falling rain is always enchanting, especially at night when the city is asleep. We leave a large tarpaulin stretched across the yard to catch the raindrops…
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258 Tidal breakers on Winchelsea beach (high definition spatial sound)
It is almost high tide on Winchelsea Beach. Old timbers, buried in the shingle berm, point up into the hazy winter sky. You scrunch over the stones. Rest your hands on their sturdy weatherworn tops. And begin to take in the scene. Clean sea air cuffs against your face. It smells faintly of salt…
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257 Dawn birds of The Kielder Forest
This spatial sound-scene of dawn birdsong was captured from deep within the Kielder Forest, a huge wilderness of fir trees in the far north east of England almost at the border with Scotland. Along with most all of our 257 episodes, this audio was produced by leaving the Lento box to record alone...
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256 Gulls and emptiness along the Creel Path
(Hello! We're a different type of podcast. If you're new to us, before you listen, here's a few tips about getting the most out of listening to Radio Lento.) The Creel Path, used by generations of fisherman to get from Coldingham to the coastal fishing village of St Abbs in the far south east of...
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255 Quantock trees in late October air (night and sleep safe)
A wide open landscape, under a dark October sky. Remote. Naturally quiet. Witnessed from behind a lone cottage hidden between tall graceful trees. It's just rained. Drips are falling from the old slate roof into an overfilled drain. Time passes. Somewhere far off, mid-right of scene, an owl…
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254 Waves of West Somerset (sleep safe)
Follow the path with the sea on your left side, until you reach the trees. It's only a small outcrop, just beyond the banks of tangled shrubbery and before you get to the location of a 19th century harbour of Lilstock in West Somerset, now long-gone. Step off the path. Lean against one of the...