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

Full Episode description

Heavily, this winter rain falls. Persistent. Cold. Wet. Refreshing. In waves. In sprinkling flurries. Over time. Onto the huge tarpaulin stretched across the yard, each drop’s long downward journey is both completed, and revealed, in one tiny moment. 

It’s actually quite loud! And so dense and complex and layered with detail that we tend to hear it as, well, just rain. Just plain old, simple, rain. Listen in though, especially through a pair of headphones, and layer upon layer of spatially detailed rich textured sound will to you become revealed. And if you’re in the mood for it, for some really good, long, refreshingly detailed rain, it seems the longer it goes, the more it holds your attention.

Rain, depending where you live in the world, can be a very ordinary thing. But it is also a very spacious and complexly detailed thing. Best captured with panoramic binaural microphones. 

When it comes, it redefines the place it lands. In fact, it entirely changes it. Before the rain came, this little backyard, was just some outside space, waiting for another day to come. But with its collections of things, so many of them resonant to the tap and patter of the falling drops, the space suddenly transformed, and became full and bright with meaning. 

The canopy and the upturned paint tins. The empty plastic tubs, the wide leafed shrubs, small bushes and the old shed with broken boxes on top. The stack of old planks lent up against the outside wall, beneath a dripping gutter, the exposed patch of concrete paving and the dull wintering grass. And the lone discarded football, kicked into the middle of the lawn. Every thing. Revealed in sound. By falling rain.