“I prefer radio to TV because the pictures are better.”
Alistair Cooke
Sometimes photography’s not enough to tell a story, so that’s why I love to make audio recordings too, another way of creating pictures in the mind…
…the sound of a chirruping bird is swapped for the chirruping bridge as a heavy freight train passes overhead on the 1830s Ouseburn Viaduct, one of the major bridges along the route of the East Coast Mainline.
I intend to make a longer soundscape of this special spot in due course.
The photograph accompanying the recording is one I made 17 years ago in July 2003.
Listen out for the terns and gulls, and the freighter that entering the port midway through.
Before leaving, I couldn’t resist putting my microphones right next to one of the fenders to make this recording. I held one mic and naval historian Iain Ballantyne held the other!
I’ve included the finished piece in my Dawn Chorus playlist. It was also published on the Ambient Isolation website where you can find out more details…listen out for my contribution at the 22 minute mark!
Contributors were asked to record from 5-7am on 25 April and then submit “the most interesting minute”.
However, when I examined the final recording, I realised the strongest part of this morning’s dawn chorus coincidentally lasted for exactly one hour, so that’s what I’ve prepared for you here.
If you’re feeling cooped up, I hope it helps to soothe the head and the heart by bringing a little bit of nature into your room.
The full length recording will take you on quite a sonic journey, an hour long story with a beginning, middle and end. It starts off very quietly and gradually becomes stronger before tailing off towards the end when you’ll hear the first cars passing on the main road nearby.
The stipulated time was to record from 5-7 am but I decided to start earlier so that I could make this one minute recording at 4:18am.
Why?
Well, I’m a big fan of Kate Tempest’s album ‘Let Them Eat Chaos’, a concept album about seven strangers living in South London.
The events told within the tracks all take place at the very specific time of 4:18am.
She explains:
“At that time in the morning, people are open with their vulnerabilities because they are not in the previous day or the coming day. The day doesn’t belong to anyone yet.”
I love that sentiment, so I wanted to experience — and record — that very specific time of day, both as a nod to Kate’s album and to the witching hour famous in folklore.
Jack Lowe 