Slow Radio

From the medina of Marrakech to the palmeries in Zagora, join sound recordists Andrea Campisi and Silvia Malnati as they embark upon a roadtrip in sound, leaving the capital city to journey across southeast Morocco. Across four movements of contrasting energies, bound together by the motif of the muezzin’s call to prayer, we listen to an immersive musical suite comprising binaural field recordings and on-location sound.

I. Allegro: ...

Time unravels in this hypnotic audio journey...

In this edition of Slow Radio, we tumble inside the delicate mechanism of the clock - our attempt to contain and mark the steady rush of time itself. Musical and rhythmic, this surreal audio composition moves between the meditative beat of a single timepiece through to a cacophonous eruption of melodious chimes and cuckoos. The Clock will air just after Big Ben's midnight chimes play o...

How does the Berlin urban landscape sound?

Using a unique approach that combines field recordings and photographs translated into audio, the Uruguayan and Berlin-based artist Darío Dornel, aka Kirap, takes listeners on a captivating journey through the city's hidden soundscapes.

Pictures of recognisable city places are translated into sound using audio software through Bitmap's code conversion. A wide range of sounds is generated usi...

YA Z AN, a Palestinian Berlin-based artist, travels around his hometown of Ramallah, located in the heart of the West Bank. During his journey, YA Z AN encounters sounds that comfort and remind him of home. He uses binaural technology to collect audio pieces from the verdant Palestinian landscape and sculpts them with sounds from everyday life to create a complete surround sound experience.

Setting off with a ‘oud player singing fol...

With its peak at 2410 metres in altitude, the North Grigna is an imposing quasi-mythical character in the local culture of the Lombardy region. Those who get to its top can take in a 360-degree view over the Alps, Lake Como and the plains around Milan. Celebrated by Leonardo Da Vinci in his Codex Atlanticus for its rocky ridges, the mountain is also the protagonist in an Italian Alpine folk song entitled The Legend of the Grigna. T...

Beekeeper Anthony Smith looks after several hundred beehives across Herefordshire and South East Wales. This episode of Slow Radio takes us to one of his apiaries where we eavesdrop on Anthony’s activities. It’s the middle of the summer, and the bees are at their busiest.

Many of the sounds of bees and beekeeping have barely changed for thousands of years, whereas others are distinctly modern. We’ll hear single bees collecting necta...

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds. A special edition featuring the Sounds of the Earth mixes of music and the incredible sounds of the insects, birds and animals featured in BBC One's Wild Isles series.

The nature sounds were captured by the audio team at Silverback Films, with audio post-production from Wild Buffalo, and kindly shared with Radio 3’s Sunday Breakfast team for the weekly Sounds of the Earth feature...

Across Britain, 352 BBC transmitters stand, mostly on the tops of hills broadcasting sound, music and voices invisibly across the country. In this slow radio episode, Matthew Herbert and a group of recording engineers visited some of these transmitters in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England to listen to what the transmitters were hearing at exactly 11.30 at night - the time of this broadcast. Starting at the transmitter a...

This Slow Radio experience features sounds from the BBC television programme Wild Isles: a chance to revel in the extraordinary sounds recorded and created for the series, without voice-over or music.

Using an aural collage of clips, the half-hour soundscape takes a journey from mountain stream to the sea, around Great Britain and Ireland. It utilises sounds from the Freshwater and Oceans episodes and begins with a specially recorde...

There’s a gentle rhythm to everyday life in a Hindu temple, that follows carefully choreographed rituals linked to the care of the deities - creating a rich aural texture from dawn when the gods are woken, to nightfall when they sleep. The sounds wax and wane; each part of the day has its own soundscape and the priest presides over it all. You’ll hear the constant sound of bells as a backdrop, rung by devotees as they approach the ...

High in the mountains snow falls. As it comes to rest on the frozen slopes it become part of an ancient glacier. Over the course of 100 years the glacier will flow down the valley, changing the landscape around it.

Using field recordings from deep within glaciers, along with the sounds of the natural world around them, this programme charts an imagined journey of snow and glacier from mountain top to valley floor.

Over the course of ...

It is January 2022, and in the Upper Manhattan neighbourhood of Harlem all is quiet as people stay at home, preferring not to venture out into the minus-13-degree snow and ice that has blanketed the city.

This half-hour soundscape begins with the geese pecking at the frozen lake at the northern tip of Central Park with the occasional sound of a passer by who has braved the weather.

As we head north to Harlem, walking up Malcolm X Bou...