277 Emptiness within Shelve Wood at night – part II (sleep safe)

Full Episode description

This week we’re returning to Shelve Wood in Shropshire to witness another hour from the unaccompanied overnight capture we made in June. This section of time includes the effects of a strong weather front. It sweeps over the dense woodland, creating rich spatial waves of naturally occurring white, brown and grey noise. 

Because the Lento box spent the whole night alone immersed within the forest, recording in high definition binaural sound, by listening back with headphones or Airpods we’re able to aurally locate ourselves within Shelve Wood itself. Become aural witnesses. Hearing as if we are there, how time passed, surrounded by the trees. the sense of space. How each tree responds in its own unique way to the wind. And the rain drops, that find their way all the way down through the thick firs, to land on the forest floor.

 * This section of time is from the early hours of the morning. The fir tree that held the Lento box was impressively tall. The Lento box captures the acoustical space of the forest facing outwards from the trunk, five feet (human height) above the ground. It’s a vast reverberant zone that apart from the tree trunks, is essentially an empty space between the soft cushion of the forest floor and the ceiling of dense fir needles twenty feet above. In this zone the natural noises of the forest travel over long distances.