Radio Lento podcast

195 Tranquility found on England’s highest railway station

26 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dent station lies on the historic Settle to Carlisle railway between Blea Moor Tunnel and Rise Hill Tunnel. It's the highest operational railway stati...

194 Inside a bird hide

19 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The atmosphere inside a bird hide is quite unusual, as interior spaces go. Low wind moaning in the drooping wires between telegraph poles. Whispering ...

193 Slow waves in the night quiet (sleep safe)

12 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It's always strange when we leave the Lento box behind to record overnight. The feeling is strong, but also hard to pin down. The Lento box feels like...

192 Remembering summer on the Hoo Peninsula

04 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The experience of being out in the wide open on Higham Marshes in Kent on a warm May afternoon is nothing short of glorious. It's a perfect location f...

191 Moorland waterfall (sleep safe natural white noise)

28 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An hour of pure falling water in a natural wide open landscape. Captured in the early hours of yesterday morning in the hills of Derbyshire. A place o...

190 St Mary’s Church in Rye

21 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We're hugely grateful to Revd Paul White of St Mary's church at Rye for enabling this special recording to be made. An aural presence of St Mary's chu...

189 Night rain falls on a drystone wall (quiet and sleep safe)

14 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There, thought the old drystone wall. I knew it. A tawny owl. Flying silent, up top the field. It'll only be a shadow, if ever you do get to see it. ...

188 Rock seat on Rye Harbour beach

07 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Near a limpet covered wall, beaten into shape by high tide waves and squally weather, are some rocks submerged in shingle. Rye Harbour shingle. Sun wa...

187 Steam train stops at country station

30 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

You strode up to this field, through lush meadow, for a better view over Arley station. And now you're here. It's a perfect Shropshire August day. Blu...

186 Slow forest Wyre valley

23 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What happens, inside slow forest, is not much. Just the odd snap and crack, of a dry twig dropping, every now and then.  I know sometimes there is a ...

185 Onshore breeze on Chesil beach (sleep safe and in hi-def sound)

16 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This onshore breeze. A pleasant one, will not cuff too much against your ears. It'll flutter. Like a dark brown feather quivers, on a current of movin...

184 River rilling through Miller’s Dale (sleep safe, hour-long)

09 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Miller's Dale. Steep sided. A valley in the Derbyshire Dales with magnificent contours. High rocky outcrops. Sheer faced cliffs. Green fields plunging...

183 Upland fir forest (sleep safe and ideal for headphones)

02 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

High, in the remoteness of the Cumbrian hills above Dentdale, with buzzards circling overhead, we found a fir forest.  Tall, elegant trees, reaching ...

182 Night scapes special - August intermission 4 (sleep safe)

26 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For this last August intermission episode we've made you a montage of *sleep safe* sound-scenes selected from four overnight recordings. From the sea ...

181 Woodland scapes special - August intermission 3

19 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For this penultimate intermission episode, we've made you a montage of sound-scenes selected from four enchanting woodland episodes. A forest ravine h...

180 Coastal scapes special - August intermission 2

12 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We're taking an intermission during August. Rather than disappearing, we're made you a montage of sound-feels selected from previous episodes. This we...

179 Rain scapes special - August intermission 1 (sleep safe)

05 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We're taking an intermission during August. Rather than disappearing, we're sharing a different type of episode, each with a theme, using some of the ...

178 Waves of the intertidal zone (Don’t forget Lento’s built for headphones!)

29 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A shadow grey rock, the size of a stranded ship. Radiating heat, remembered from the midday sun. Around it, rock pools, and smooth curving shapes. Lik...

177 Summer meadow woodland edge

22 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

You find yourself, suddenly out. On the other side of the wood. The edge, of a wide open empty field. A meadow. Tall elegant trees, given way to a h...

176 Early morning below Nothe Fort

15 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The sound-scene is of a smooth, sunrise sea, heard from a tree, growing up out of a bundle of boulders, close to the water's edge. It's early April, a...

175 Night train sleeper (sleep safe)

08 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

  The cabin, is compact, in every way. Every inch, accounted for. Every component, slotted in, perfectly. And, with full rucksack and boots and spare...

174 Where cool woodland meets the summer sea (an afternoon snooze)

01 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

At the far end of the long sandy beach at Tenby there's an area of cool, shady woodland. From the distance and under hot summer sunshine, it looks idy...

173 Deep forest time (long & sleep safe)

24 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This is a blend of intimate and wide spatial quiet, captured as it happened from beside an old oak tree, in a remote spot in the Forest of Dean. The t...

172 Heatwave thunderstorm that washes and cools (panoramic, made for headphones)

17 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Have the back streets faded to silent? Have the dogs begun to bark? Quick, get in, there's a storm coming. The front room chair with the cushion that ...

171 Sunrise birds in sea washed air

10 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sunrise over Tenby. Blue sky. Scudding clouds. 5am, and nobody about, except for the birds in the murmuring air of a seaside town. This sound photogra...

170 Night murmuring in Tenby (sleep safe)

03 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tenby. A seaside town on the South coast of Wales. End of May into early June. Late sunsets, followed by warm, springtime nights. It's 1am and the mic...

169 Ear witness report from the Hoo Peninsula May 2023

27 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Hoo Peninsula is a vast open landscape on the Thames Estuary. Huge uninhabited swathes of ground. The mics (recording alone) were lodged in a hawt...

168 At the mouth of a sea cave (Lento’s best with headphones)

20 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On Portland Bill. Dorset. We climb down jagged rocks. Naturally formed steps, waist deep, towards the water. Evenly uneven. Like narrow walkways. Some...

167 An hour under moorland trees (rainy and sleep safe)

13 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Just an hour. Under moorland trees. An hour to listen, to the weather, the flurries of rain. How they come and go. And the steady currents of wind. Fo...

166 Midnight waves at the foot of the sea fort (sleep safe)

06 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Here, in this quiet and empty spot, only the waves can be heard, as they break sedately, upon the rocks. The waves and the velvety silence that seems ...

165 Up in the hills of mid Wales

29 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This episode includes lively birdsong, a trickling stream, foraging bees, a creaky pheasant flapping, a few softly passing vehicles along a country ro...

164 Garden rain as winter turns to spring (daydream and sleep safe)

22 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

After last episode's tumultuous waves upon a dramatic shingle shoreline, this week we retire behind the secluded walls of a little garden, at the back...

163 Chesil Beach (sleep safe and in high-definition sound)

15 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Last week, we walked on Chesil Beach. We felt its steepness. Its shingle. Its sound. We heard its heavy waves. The way the stones are heaved back, in ...

162 Waterfall gorge on Dartmoor (high definition spatial sound)

08 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When a rushing torrent cascades, down a precipitous rocky gorge.  When the intensity of the white noise is so brilliant on your ears, that it feels l...

161 Fishing village harbour at night - part 2 (sleep safe)

01 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

St Abbs. A small fishing village and harbour in bygone times, perched on the coastal edge of South East Scotland.  A wonderful place to experience wh...

160 Forest ravine

25 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This precipitous place, high in the Derbyshire hills, flows with birdsong and fresh moorland water. It's aural presence is made almost entirely of nat...

159 Pure Northumbrian air (don’t forget Lento’s best with headphones)

18 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A wide open landscape, resting, between gusts of rain-speckled Northumbrian air. This place, on the edge of the Northumberland National Park, is endle...

158 That edgeland feel along the Thames near Tilbury Docks (sleep safe)

11 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Bright hazy sunshine. Behind, and up the bank, a winding footpath, littered with discarded sunbleached things. Here, sat still and amongst it all, den...

157 Immersed in Bayford Woods (an ear-witness account)

04 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sometimes we feel it's right to share an ear-witness account from a place where natural quiet and human-made noise co-exist. Our last was from the For...

156 Sheltered under night rain (sleep safe and high definition sound)

25 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The city sleeps, under a dark impenetrable sky. Streets, almost empty. Beneath invisible rainclouds, countless back gardens hold up their hands. Up, a...

155 Out on Cooden Beach at night - part 1 (sleep safe)

18 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A mid-February night and you're out on an empty beach, for the cold sea air, and that feeling of wild emptiness. There's nobody about. Past the silent...

154 An Exeter garden awakes

11 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We captured this passage of time on a visit to some friends in Exeter last year in April during a spell of fine weather. It turned out to be a silky s...

153 Freezing January rain under Britain’s highest pylon (sleep safe)

04 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

At over 600 feet high, and visible for miles, this giant mass of steel pylon on Swanscombe Marsh on the Thames Estuary has a sister. They stand togeth...

152 High above Folkestone beach

28 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Time aside. And at rest. A quiet, leafy space. Folkestone, on the Kent coast. An area called the Warren, where forested steeps slope and tumble into t...

151 Dusky echoes in the Forest of Dean

21 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dusk has come, and the Forest of Dean is, very gradually, darkening. Silence, like dew, is beginning to settle in the voids and hollows between the t...

150 Looking down on Coldingham Sands (January special 2 / 4)

14 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There's a bench. Perfectly perched, by the sandy steps that lead steeply down onto Coldingham Sands. Perfectly perched, because the sound-view from th...

149 Dawn birdsong from Derbyshire (a brighten up January special 1/4)

07 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dawn. Bright morning sky. High pressure, barometer rising. A vast quiet sky, etched with a few scudding clouds picked out by the light of the rising s...

148 Suffolk Wood (part 13) - 8am to 9am

31 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For the very last episode of 2022, and because it's so cold and dank, we want to use the magic of spatial sound landscape recording to teleport back i...

147 The barn high up the moor (sleep safe - atmospheric with headphones)

24 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A barn, that's stood alone on the steeply sloping fields below the summit of Black Hill in Derbyshire, for longer than anyone can remember. This is th...

146 Fresh air along the Creel Path

17 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Changing weather. Shifting scenes. The east coast of Scotland above St Abbs. A landscape whose geography leaves it exposed to everything that the sky ...

145 Curling folding breaking waves (part 2 in hi-def sound)

10 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hear. This solitude. This real captured quiet. This authentic air. From horizon to horizon. Near empty of human-made noise. Aural solitude. Rare? Beco...

144 Garden beside meadow in the Derbyshire hills

03 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

High in the Derbyshire hills, a century-old garden is being blown dry by brisk morning air. It's quiet. Sheltered. Surrounded by strong gritstone wall...

143 Lullaby waves by Nothe Sea Fort (sleep safe)

26 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Peering out from atop the high seawall of Nothe Fort. Two o'clock in the morning. High tide, and the sea below feels so near. Overhead the sky is fain...

142 All aboard the Night Riviera (source of dark brown soporific noise)

20 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It's gone dark. It's 21:15. And you're standing on platform 1 of the railway station in Penzance. Bright lamps light the long platforms, and seaside s...

141 Soft land murmuring - Wooler, Northumberland

12 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

An exposed tree, looking down upon the town of Wooler, high in the Northumberland hills. It stands amidst wide open fields, by an empty bench and an o...

140 Fishing village harbour at night (sleep safe)

05 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This is real quiet from the middle of the night, captured from a point above the harbour of St Abbs on the East Coast of Scotland. Car-free. Plane-fre...

139 Old rafters brewing storm

29 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

At the top of the old Victorian house are several flights of dim, dark stairs. Steep. Narrow. Cold. They lead up to a pair of rarely used attic rooms....

138 Ocean peace above Folkestone beach (sleep safe)

22 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dusk gathering, we found a stony path, and followed it. Microphones still in the rucksack. It'd been a long day, and we still hadn't found the right p...

137 Night rains amongst moorland trees (sleep safe)

15 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Up a soily slope, almost too steep to climb, nestled in against the smooth trunk of a tree, the microphones are recording. Recording the sound of soli...

136 Curling folding breaking waves (high-definition sound and sleep safe)

08 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Wide silent sky. Still warm air. Having followed a country footpath across miles of open farmland you reach a stony bank and, like a natural magic tri...

135 A natural sound report from the Forest of Dean

01 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This is a segment of time from a clearing deep in the Forest of Dean. Echoing birds in full voice. Soft hushing breezes in high treetops. Then, over t...

134 Night waves rolling onto Coldingham Sands (sleep safe)

24 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Up steep steps from the sandy beach, and a birds-ear view of ocean breakers from a thicket, perched half-way up the cliff. Several hours to go before ...

133 Vivid rain - rolling thunder (very spatial experience with headphones)

17 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A rare night amongst nights. A dark landscape, subdued, beneath immense and invisible storm clouds. It's just past eleven thirty on Monday the fifth o...

132 A bird watcher’s outpost beneath the telegraph wires

10 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Warm sunlit afternoon. Late August. On the nature reserve at Mucking, beside the Thames in Essex. A bird hide. Perched on a steep bank amongst reeds, ...

131 A thousand years along the Creel Path

03 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A straight and stony path heads through open country, towards the sea. Beside the track, amongst land in-between, a tree. Lone and leafy. Like a sentr...

Daydream 4 - water rain wind

27 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Children play on a soft sandy beach by the Essex Wildlife Trust nature reserve at Stanford-le-Hope. When the tide goes out, this amazing hidden beach ...

Daydream 3 - rain water woods (new material coming soon)

20 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It's the dead of night. Along an exposed stretch of seawall East of Burnham-on-Crouch, a deluge has started. Rain lashes down from a pitch black sky o...

Daydream 2 - lazy summer days

13 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Wondering along the path from Althorn to North Fambridge in Essex. Skylarks! Their contented never-ending songs, wheeling about slowly in the warm the...

Daydream 1 (a series of short August adventures)

06 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Begin, by a country church on the hills above Harlow in Essex, and at the foot of a jovial fir tree, hushed by warm wind. It's a sunny afternoon and a...

130 Dartmoor stream above waterfall gorge - hydrotherapeutic + * sleep safe*

30 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

After an hour's steep upward toil, through a thickly wooded gorge and along some very precipitous granite rock formations, you reach a wooden footbrid...

129 Pristine quiet to early dawn (includes woodcock roding calls in full spatial detail)

23 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For this week's episode we're back in the Forest of Dean for a different kind of captured quiet. Quiet that transforms from one thing to another. A ki...

128 Persistent rain (long, sleep safe, may ease heat fatigue when used in combination with a fan)

16 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Heavily, this winter rain falls. Persistent. Cold. Wet. Refreshing. In waves. In sprinkling flurries. Over time. Onto the huge tarpaulin stretched acr...

127 Mirrored ambiences from a summer meadow at Wrabness

09 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

With Wrabness station behind us, the footpath stretched ahead. A warm summer day. Skylarks singing overhead. Sweet scented breezes freshening the clea...

126 The seawall and the night patrolling curlews (quiet, long, sleep safe)

02 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

To be a remote seawall, on a stretch of tidal estuary.  To see the days and nights not as periods of time, but as slowly undulating waves. To feel th...

125 May rain in the Forest of Dean

25 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A band of cloud slowly drifts towards a sunlit clearing, deep in the Forest of Dean. It's morning in late May, and the birds are lighting up the space...

124 Midnight waves by the sea fort at Weymouth (sleep safe)

18 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We've been struggling to sleep in the heat. To help, if you are having the same trouble, we're sharing another segment of cool and quiet from Nothe Fo...

123 A sound-view from Orcombe Point on the Jurassic coast

11 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Between the stubby trees, a stony path. Shrubs, unusual grasses. Feeling the climb, and the air. For the first time this year it's warmer than skin. W...

122 Forest bathing in the cathedral of trees

04 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We're really happy to be able to share with you this latest piece of captured quiet, fresh from the Forest of Dean. It's a passage of early evening ti...

121 On Portland Bill

28 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

At the edge of a craggy rock promontory, near the giant lighthouse, there's strong sea wind, and an old rusted crane. Past the collection of weather-b...

120 Secrets in the spring air - inland coastal country

21 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On the footpath from Winchelsea to Rye (the one that goes inland and round in a long loop) we came across a small copse of trees in the corner of a fi...

119 Dawn chorus in the rain high in the Derbyshire hills

14 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

These are the last woods that an ancient track passes through on its rocky way up onto the flanks of Black Hill, Derbyshire. The last woods to catch t...

118 Lullaby sea by Nothe Fort (sleep safe)

07 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It's the dead of night. Everything still. A panoramic stillness, stretching for miles, across this coastal Dorset landscape. The tide's in, and withou...

117 Dartmoor birds through white noise mist

30 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Captured only a few weeks ago, this sound landscape is from a place where woodland birds sing through a mist of pristine white noise. A place empty of...

116 Sissing plantations in open country

23 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Stopped in our tracks some way along the path from Althorne to North Fambridge, by a sound. Plantations swaying in a gentle wind. The brightness. The ...

115 Coastal city sleeping (sleep safe)

16 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What makes that city noise at night? That strangely non-descript hum. That audible presence that seems to be made of nothing and everything, and comes...

114 Crashing waves at Durdle Door

09 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It's when you've been listening to it for a while, within the gravitational pull of this immense rock promontory, that it starts to make sense. The la...

113 Spring’s here in mild valley

02 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Sheltered against the gnarled trunk of an old holly tree, beside a country lane, the microphones are recording. Or maybe to them, they are looking. Lo...

112 Suffolk Wood (part 12) - 7am to 8am

26 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Radio Lento is 2! Thank you for listening, for supporting, and for the many kind messages. It all started here, in this Suffolk Wood. So to celebrate ...

111 Soundscenes of estuary rain

19 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For this week's episode we head back to the rugged seawall below Burnham-on-Crouch, to witness the sound of summer rain as it falls onto inland tidal ...

110 Rain falls in Banfield Wood

12 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Sky greying. Rain coming. A muddy path under bare trees. This is the wood where we should record. Beneath a buzzard circling, a perfect tree, mid-poin...

109 Here at the river’s edge

05 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Now you're here, unhook the burden, and let it rest upon the wild grass. Walk away. Away from it, and down, onto the rocks. Away, and over the wetted ...

108 Song thrush sings in twilight gales

26 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We were told a song thrush lives up in the wood. The old place on the side of an exposed and remote hill, where sheep are kept in a paddock under the ...

107 Shellness bleak where land meets sea (best heard with time and headphones)

19 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This, is bleak. Wave, weather worn, bleak. Windswept, land end bleak. What we've come for. An exposed area of land that noses out into the North Sea. ...

106 In time the wren will come - Murmurs of the Kerry Ridgeway

12 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Cold clear water flows, through a dell beneath trees. Hidden behind brambles. A place for the foraging bee. Here, is a place that's miles away. Is a p...

105 Boy dog beach fossils

05 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It was last weekend when we made a long train journey out to the North Essex coast, to reach Walton-on-the-Naze. We planned the trip because our maps ...

104 While away in winter woodland (a clear mind special)

29 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

December is a very quiet month for natural sound out here in the walkable wilderness. Wind moaning in the telegraph wires, and rain spattering into fl...

103 Tidal breakers winter beach - in HD sound

22 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How it is, that a winter weekend city walk, can end up like this - by the seaside! How an inner city landscape, with its roads and concrete valleys be...

102 Mild valley in June at the Cheshire / Derbyshire border (source of natural white noise)

15 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

There is always quiet. Somewhere. All the time great swathes of it do exist. But these, are the farthest from reach.   Here though, is some, within r...

101 At Benfleet Creek

08 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

With Benfleet behind, see ahead the footpath to Leigh-on-Sea. It's a beckoning line to the horizon. But for now, we can just let it go. Let it go beca...

100 Suffolk Wood (part 11) - a new day

01 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Six strikes St Mary's bell, and it's a new day. A new woodland day, with time returned to normal. The wood pigeons coo it. The cow lows it. The buzzar...