We started Radio Lento on 29 March 2020 as a lockdown project. Now, almost two years later, we have a precious library of over a hundred episodes which document the sound of quiet places in Britain. Our entire collection has just been added to the most prestigious archive in the country, preserved for future generations to hear.
We’d had the idea for Radio Lento, years ago. In March 2020 when normal life paused, we had time to research the technical set up and finally got it off the ground. It quickly became a way for us to do something creative and positive during a difficult time. It was vehicle to share beautiful recordings from our archive we had made over the years. We didn’t have a plan beyond the next episode. The project gave us a focus, and as it grew, it gave listeners a way to experience the outside through sound.
Since then, Lento has taken over our lives. We’ve visited and recorded all sorts of new places. We’ve documented how sound changes through the seasons and in different weather conditions. We’ve also observed how the landscape got noisy again once car and plane travel re-started.
To date, we’ve shared 111 episodes, all recorded by us and in 3d sound so listening with headphones is a close experience of being there. People across the world have travelled through their ears to quiet corners of England and Wales.
You might not know the names of these places but it doesn’t matter. Each recording is a preserved moment of the sound at that place – the trees, the birds, the water, the wind. We leave our microphones to record alone and walk on 1/2 mile so nature can settle without us there to influence it. Collectively Lento episodes are a document of the sound of country places in England and Wales in the 2000s.
So we were thrilled when the British Library invited us to be added to the Sound and Moving Image catalogue. Although currently Lento can be accessed through podcast apps and the Podbean website, we don’t know what will happen to it in the future – will these formats and channels still exist? Being part of the BL’s collection means Radio Lento episodes are preserved as part of a vast and amazing digital archive.
Current and future researchers searching for places such as Benfleet, Bexhill or the Peak District, can filter the results to see listings of audio recordings and Lento episodes are included. We searched for Rye Harbour and found a sound recording entry from 1979 alongside ours over 40 years later. How fascinating to hear if the sound of a place has changed or the essence of it has stayed the same.
Who knows what the world will sound like in 10, 20, 50 or 100 years time. How will researchers of the future listen to material in the sound archive? It’s impossible to imagine! We are honoured to have our work documenting everyday sounds from the British landscape, preserved like this for future use.
We’d like to say a special thank you to everyone who has helped Lento keep going. That’s everyone who has listened, shared, donated or helped promote Lento. We couldn’t have turned our small idea into this, without you.
- Search the whole British Library catalogue.
- Items in the BL catalogue are accessible to people with a British Library Reader Card, in-person at the BL sites.
- Sound archive – the sound collection features 1 million discs, 185k tapes and many other sound and video recordings from all over the world.
- About the British Library Sound Archive.
About Lento
Read about how Radio Lento episodes are made.
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- We are self-funded sound recordists. Please buy us a coffee or buy Radio Lento sound cards on Ko-fi to keep us going.
Radio Lento 