249 Night stream at West Quantoxhead (sleep safe after 17 mins)

Radio Lento podcast

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With the stream to our right, we headed down from the exposed uplands of West Quantoxhead and into a shallow valley. Sky whitish grey. Air still. It smelled of rich late Autumn undergrowth, and faintly of mushrooms.

As we descended, the landscape changed. Became tucked in. Shapes of sheep shifted against dark thickets below. The grass got thicker too, and taller. And the stream got fuller, and more sonorous, with every hundred yards. Eventually we found ourselves in a completely different landscape. A watery, secluded dell.

The sheep magically disappeared. Dissolved into the thickets and behind the trees. Running down over shallow stones, the stream flowed through the dell without urgency. Its sonorous wrillings reflecting perfectly off the leafy surroundings. Bright, but not too bright. With a fresh spatialness, audibly illuminating the contours of the natural space.

Here, set below high steep banks of dense undergrowth, far away in the Quantocks of West Somerset, sound and time melded. Unified, into one well tempered flow.

* The Lento box captured this scene tied to a tree during an unaccompanied overnight record in late October. We spent a long time in near total darkness testing out how different angles onto the stream sounded from various trees. We chose one set back from the stream, preferring this well balanced aural composition rather than a closer angle where the noise of the stream would drown out the subtle acoustic reflections of the space itself. The ambient sound levels were incredibly low. Listening back, we can sometimes hear the sheep, quietly moving about. After 17 minutes into the segment they wonder off, leaving only the stream to be heard, and the passing of time, in this natural secluded place.

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