264 Garden rain at night (sleep safe)

Full Episode description

Last summer when we were stuck at home, and when heavy rain was forecast between midnight and three, we decided it’d be nice to capture its sound. The idea is enchanting. Rain, falling, on a little suburban garden, verdant with plants and shrubs of various kinds, as they quietly and invisibly sleep through the night. 

Hearing this scene though, is only possible by staying up and getting very tired and wet. But this is where the Lento box comes in. By leaving it out all night to do the listening and capturing, in natural spatial detail, we can then re-experience the sound of time passing through a pair of headphones or Airpods. It’s a much more comfortable way to appreciate what a place sounded like, when there was no one around to witness it.

If you’ve listened to Lento before, you’ll know we usually capture the sound of falling rain from underneath a large tarpaulin we have stretched across our back yard. This time we decided to try something new. Right at the end of our little garden there are lots of plants and shrubs huddled against an old brick wall. Along the top of the wall is a wisteria plant that’s got very big over the years. So many different types of leaves, we thought, to catch the rain drops as they fall. Just before midnight, and as the first rain began to fall, we placed the Lento box on a short tripod directly underneath the wisteria, and left it to record. Water was already pouring down through the leaves. A test for the box’s weatherproofing, we hopefully muttered to ourselves, as we closed the back door and shuffled off to bed.

* The recording location was north east London in July 2024. We have carefully chosen a segment of time where the least traffic noise and human activity is audible. Some micro-editing was needed though to ensure unavoidable noises such as heavy raindrops landing directly onto the microphone baffles and the occasional crump of cars rolling over local speed bumps have been softened out. Some planes overfly but they are very soft and gentle in tone. We have tagged this episode sleep safe due to the minimal impact of these non-natural sounds.