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

Full Episode description

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 what the world must have sounded like, before machines were invented. It is, for this reason, quite a rare place, where people can go to bathe their ears, uninterrupted, with naturally spatial oceanic noise. 

To the eye, St Abbs rests along a dramatic coastal landscape, with high jagged cliffs and plummeting rock faces festooned in the daylight hours with noisy kittiwakes. To the ear though, the landscape tells a different story. A story that’s about wide openness. About how sound and water waves must travel over long distances. About lofty seagulls, who seem to live in never-ending circles in the astronomically dark sky.

Here, looking out over the harbour from an elevated position, the microphones are alone and recording. Capturing the rarified vibrations that waft about like acoustic mists in the salt tinged air. Layers upon layers of soft white, reverberating  noise. Sound waves made by water waves. Countless waves, breaking against and revealing to the ear through the total darkness, the harbour walls and the rocky promentaries, that form the seaward edge of St Abbs at night.

Want more? Listen to episode 140 – Fishing village harbour at night (part one).

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