Slow Radio

A settlement first known as Almatu developed on the Silk Road from the 10th century onwards. In the 1920s, the new Soviet authorities renamed the place Alma-Ata ('Grandfather of the apple') and made it the capital of the Kazakh SSR (formerly in Kyzylorda).

We start our journey from one of Almaty's Soviet-era train stations, Almaty-2, built in the 1930s, with its paintings by Kazakh and Russian artists and the multi-lingual Tower of Babel representing the journey's start, in conversations and tannoy announcements.

We hear the old Soviet engines arriving into the station, disgorging their passengers before awaiting a new intake; we hear the slow steady rhythm of the train, as passengers in varied states of boredom chat to each other and eat meals; we hear the sound of scalding water being decanted from the samovar, to make the harsh tea beloved in these parts for so many years; in the dining car we hear passengers sharing food, drink and stories, as they eat 'Plov' and other traditional food.

We step out of the train at various points along the route, such as Turkistan (an ancient trade centre along the Silk Road) and Shymkent, where hawkers with their wares wait to sell food and drink.

After 33 hours on board a train, we arrive at Aralsk, a thriving fishing port until environmental degradation and diversion of rivers for agriculture saw the sea massively shrink. We journey by car across the former seabed, see camels at oases and hear the howling winds that sweep across the vast plains and desert, before finally arriving at the gently lapping Aral Sea, a shadow of its former self.

Producer: Michael Rossi

The Reindeer follows the epic travels of a reindeer mother and her young.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds: sanderlings on a beach in Shetland, a farmyard in Shropshire, urban birds in Buenos Aires and the Red Burn in Argyllshire.

Wildlife recordings from Radio 3 Sunday Breakfast listeners Ian Reid, Barbara Petty, Susan Robinson and Bob Dickinson.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds. Cicadas in Portugal, sheep in Wensleydale and a magnificent dusk chorus in Wiltshire.

Wildlife recordings from Radio 3 Sunday Breakfast listeners Kate and John Livingston, Geoff and Christine Holland, and Ruth Taunt, plus Radio 3 producer Michael Rossi.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds. Sparrows in the heart of the City of London, birds on Shapwick Heath in Somerset, and frogs and elephants in the Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe.

Wildlife recordings from Radio 3 Sunday Breakfast listeners Vaughan Ives, Dora Thornton, Jeremy Warren and Ian Strange.

Poet Owen Sheers explores the strange sound world of the underground spaces of Wales, from slate caverns to sea caves, from Snowdonia to the Gower peninsula. In a new poem, he contemplates these dark and hidden places integral to Welsh myth, industry and psyche.

Written and read by Owen Sheers Sound design by Catherine Robinson Produced by Emma Harding

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds. Cornish waves, Welsh cows, a wren in a walnut tree and rain in the Galician mountains, recorded by Radio 3 Sunday Breakfast listeners Adriana Flores, Sean Tobin, Penny Lawrence and Alex Lisle.

The ever-present and changing sound of the wind on Fair Isle.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds. Featuring recordings of birdsong from Kelso to Senegal sent in by Radio 3 Breakfast listeners listeners Betsy Barker, Caroline Fiennes, Helen Boyles and Ros Bleach.

Join Honey, a 15-year-old fox-red labrador, as she goes about her day.

The sounds of a small boat on the tidal Thames and the calls on its two-way radio.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds. Featuring recordings of spring birdsong in Bath, Leamington Spa, Gloucestershire, and the island of Mauritius, sent in by Radio 3 Breakfast listeners Colette Wilson, Anthea Asprey, Judy Bailey and John Fenner.

Stockholm-based artist Milo Lavén reveals the hidden world within slowed-down sounds.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds, from the Fens to the Scilly Isles via St Albans and Shaftesbury. Featuring recordings of birds, frogs and horses made by Radio 3 listeners Susie Nicholls, Tom Perrett, David Learner and Stuart Macer.

City life and moments of calm – a sound portrait of Riley Square in Coventry, recorded with artists Georgiou & Tolley.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds, from Kenya to New Zealand via Lancashire and the Cotswolds. Featuring recordings made by Radio3 Breakfast listeners Cathy Tattersfield and Josh Clarke, and BBC Natural History recordists Trevor Gosling and Nigel Tucker.

The sounds of energy generation across the industrial heart of Northumberland.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds. From midwinter on the English coast to the floodplains of Central Brazil via an Oxfordshire canal and a Somerset millpond, this month's mix focuses on birds.

Includes listener recordings made by Michael Bawtree and Paul Miles, BBC Natural History Unit recordings from Tim Bevan and Paul Reddish, and several made by sound recordist Chris Watson.

Tokyo-based DJ and broadcaster Nick Luscombe explores the sound of winter in Japan.

The sounds of the cosmos revealed through the sonification of astronomical data.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - from the Caribbean and back again via the rainforests of Queensland and the icy waters off Nova Scotia, Canada.

Includes listener recordings made by William Collinson and Julio Davila and BBC Natural History Unit recordings from Trevor Gosling, Mike Potts and Grace Niska Atkins.

There are 107 bell towers in Venice. Wherever you go in the city the passage of time is measured by the echo of bells across rooftops. But the biggest bell of them all – the Marangona in St. Mark's Basilica – only stirs into sound twice a day: at midday and midnight.

In this beautiful soundscape Radio 3’s Slow Radio takes you from the chime of Marangona at midday, along lapping canals and whispering alleyways, across piazzas and bridges, around this evocative city, until midnight, when the deep, resonant sound of the Marangona brings the day to an end.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - from a Loch in the Scottish Highlands to the evergreen forests of Thailand via South Africa and a tiny Gloucestershire village.

With field recordings by Hugh Manistree, Grace Niska Atkins, Christopher Hammond and Dave Reid.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - from a wolf sanctuary in Portugal to a watery Danish peninsula. Plus, sounds from grazing time at Lake Naivasha, Kenya and evening sunlight at the South Downs National Park with rooks, pigeons and a nightingale.

Jarrow Slake is an expanse of tidal mudflats at the mouth of the Tyne with fascinating social and natural histories. The Venerable Bede lived and worked here; timber from Scandinavia was brought to mature in its ponds. In 1972 the Port of Tyne authority filled these in to allow factory development. Now cars built at Sunderland are stored at Jarrow Slake prior to export. Part is a post-industrial site, where land meets water and sky. It is desolate and little visited, and so there is a rich variety of wildlife, much beneath the water and in the mud, unseen and unheard.

For several years, the sound artist and composer Tim Shaw has been recording the sounds of Jarrow Slake, at high and low tide, at ground level and underwater. He captures the sounds of industry, of passing ships, the different birds, the wind and the water. And the astonishing musical noises of the tiny aquatic creatures.

Sounding Jarrow Slake is a Slow Radio piece composed of these remarkable sounds, punctuated by bare fragments of information about the history - social, industrial and natural - of this remarkable place.

Producers: Tim Shaw and Julian May

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - from the ruins of Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight to Cerne Abbas in Dorset, via a 15th Century church in Kings Norton and a leafy park in Oxfordshire.

With field recordings by Mary Edwards and Scott Armbruster, John Mears, Robin Mills and Pete Kirkman.

After a break of over a year owing to Covid 19 Restrictions, Calum and Claire MacAulay travel back to their native Skye and North Uist for a long awaited reunion with family.

Experience a night-time journey from central London to the Suffolk coast, on a bicycle.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - from the Scottish border, to a remote island in the Cyclades, via Northumbrian moorlands and the Ribble Valley.

With field recordings by Chris Watson, Heather Wright and Tom and Jan Perrett.

An audio voyage to the remote island of Lundy, a haven for marine wildlife.

12 miles off the coast of North Devon, Lundy has long been a place of refuge. Once ruled by Barbary pirates and political plotters, the island's stormy history has blown over, leaving a peaceful haven, awash with wildlife, and home to just 20 people. Stepping ashore from the ferry, MS Oldenburg, we'll be castaways for the night, and our to guide us, is the island's nature warden, Dean Woodfin-Jones. Walking the blustery coastal path, it's time to meet the seabirds - from late spring they nest here in the cliffs, and have trebled in recent years. From the raucous cackles of guillemots and razorbills, to the cries of kittiwakes and growls of Atlantic Grey seals, Lundy’s coastline is like a polyphonic party throughout the summer breeding season. But after dark, a different kind of magic happens. At midnight, the island’s generator turns off and suddenly there's no light, no internet - only the weather and the eerie sounds that emerge from the stillness. We'll be visited by Manx shearwaters, take shelter at the top of a lighthouse, and hear a lone skylark usher in the dawn.

Produced by Amelia Parker for BBC Wales

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - from the parks of Madrid, to the southern tip of Exmoor National Park via the Malvern Hills.

With field recordings by Kevin Tomkins, Julian Tanner, Tom Perrett and Ollie Marks.

Tie on to the rope of artist and climber Dan Shipsides to go sea cliff climbing at Fairhead on the north Antrim coast of Northern Ireland. For Dan climbing and art feed into one another in unexpected and complimentary ways - both are creative acts - appreciative of aesthetics and beauty.

Also joining us on the climb will be Derry-born dancer Zoe Ramsey. She was introduced to the sport by Dan and was instantly hooked. While their climbing styles might be as different as the art they create both see parallels between what they do in the studio and what they do on the rockface. Moving, balancing and extending for Zoe, drawing a line through a vertical landscape for Dan.

With the jangle of the metal wedges they use to protect their ascent hanging from their climbing harnesses and the 'thwip' of the rope running out we join the pair as they inch their way up the cliff face with the Irish sea roaring far below in a journey from the deep blue of the water to the pale blue of the sky.

Producer: Peter McManus

Escape to the seaside and enjoy the sounds of a day at the fair.

As the country comes out of long periods of enforced lockdown, it's good to be reminded of the fun things that bring people together, and escape to a happy place, with reminders of holidays, childhood, excitement and wonder.

The Pleasure Beach at Great Yarmouth is a family-run business that has stood on the sea front for over a hundred years. It mixes the latest fairground ride technology with vintage favourites.

This Slow Radio experience takes in one of the first days of opening after the fairground's Covid-enforced shutdown.

So forget your troubles for half an hour and come and ride on the Big Apple Coaster, the carousel and the dodgems; take a fairy tale trip on a mechanical snail, dare to visit the Haunted Hotel, and watch out for the Barrel of Laughs.

Producer: Sam Hickling

Escape to the seaside and enjoy the sounds of a day at the fair.

As the country comes out of long periods of enforced lockdown, it's good to be reminded of the fun things that bring people together, and escape to a happy place, with reminders of holidays, childhood, excitement and wonder.

The Pleasure Beach at Great Yarmouth is a family-run business that has stood on the sea front for over a hundred years. It mixes the latest fairground ride technology with vintage favourites.

This Slow Radio experience takes in one of the first days of opening after the fairground's Covid-enforced shutdown.

So forget your troubles for half an hour and come and ride on the Big Apple Coaster, the carousel and the dodgems; take a fairy tale trip on a mechanical snail, dare to visit the Haunted Hotel, and watch out for the Barrel of Laughs.

Producer: Sam Hickling

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - from the Grumeti River in the Serengeti to a tiny frog pool in East Sussex, via London and Suffolk.

With field recordings by Chris Watson, Maria Margaronis, Sharon Sanderson and Hward Seaton.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - from a tiny Scottish Hamlet to the coastal paths of Devon, via Antwerp and Kenya.

With field recordings by Chris Watson, Matthew Rose, Callum and Kate in Southwest Ross-shire and Jane and Tim from Plympton, Devon.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - from Snettisham in Norfolk to West Sussex, via church bells and cowbells of Sussex and Alpine villages.

With field recordings by Chris Watson, Jan Henslow, Richard Reich, Tim Lomas, Canon Daniel Inman and Nicholas Adams.

An elemental journey into the heart of the Cairngorms with 'The Living Mountain' in hand.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - from near St Boswells in the Scottish Borders to Bristol via Costa Rica, Surrey and Manchester.

With field recordings by Gill French, Chris Watson, Eddie Breeveld, Alan Ward and Tom Dowling.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - from the eucalyptus forests of South Australia to the North Yorkshire Moors, via a Surrey garden at sunrise and an East London Park during lockdown.

With field recordings by Chris Watson, Susan Toogood, Jackie Fearnley and Anthony Sellors.

This Slow Radio feature takes us on a leisurely stroll round the park. Parks are always important but during the lockdowns they've become vital to people stuck in cities and towns. Children can still play in the park; grown-ups can still walk, run and even dance there.

When a smattering of snow fell in London recently Greenwich Park erupted with people - of all ages - pouring like lava down the icy slopes below the Royal Observatory, on sledges, tin trays, even grill pans. There were snowball skirmishes and snow sculptures appeared. It was a wonderful sight, and even more arresting were the sounds - the cacophony of joy.

The park these days is 'full of noises, sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not', the sounds of life and happiness. But, in the distance you hear, too, the sounds of sorrow - a church bell tolls and ambulances wail. Today's Slow Radio programme gathers all these - the birds, the dogs, the children, runners, boxers, ice, mud, rain, and the - almost - silence, capturing a winter's Sunday in the Park With...sound.

Producer: Julian May

Winterwatch's Gillian Burke chooses music and natural sounds that encourage her own personal wellbeing, including lapping waves, doves and crickets from her childhood in Kenya.

A slow radio journey into illumination, drawing inspiration from light beacons and signal fires. Used across the centuries as alert systems and warnings of invasion, but also for celebrations and as emblems of hope, this programme lights up the darkness, conjuring a chain of signal fires and beacons out of sound and reflecting on their meaning and purpose. Drawing on short quotes from literature from Ancient Greece to the present day, we move from the lighting of a match, to the creation of a chain of beacons, and end next to the coast at a lighthouse casting its warning light out over the sea.

Producer: Catherine Robinson for BBC Wales

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - from the banks of the River Wye to Kenton, near Newcastle, via the Bristol Downs and Manningtree. With field recordings by Karen Hall, Tim Dowling, Stefan Taylor and Chris Watson.

Take your ears on a binaural summer holiday through the Mallorcan town of Soller, from sunrise to sundown. The sleepy town awakes into market day, and tourists arrive at the Miro-decorated train station before climbing aboard the tram that runs through the town square down to the beach of Port de Soller. Night brings the local fiesta of St Bartomeu as the drums beat into the night in the town square.

Composer Iain Chambers’s celebration of the domestic sound world, starting in the present day before travelling back in time.

Lockdown gave us the excuse to consider our own home environments in a new way. Household Gods takes this new focus further, exploring in depth and amplifying the sounds of domestic objects, arranged into a through-composed musique concrète work.

This is a joyful sonic celebration of the domestic environment, starting in the present day, and travelling back in time to explore earlier homes, through historic sound research and sound design.

At times the domestic sound world is bustling, at others a haven of peace. We hear the technology that helps us cook, clean, relax, eat, pass time.

During lockdown, many of us rediscovered the hidden joy in the objects that surround us that we hadn’t properly considered before our enforced isolation.

Composed and produced by Iain Chambers.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - from the Flow Country of the Scottish Highlands to the Bristol Downs, via Chesil Beach and an East Sussex bluebell wood.

With field recordings by Chris Watson, Timothy Dowling, Martin Handley, and Steve Urquhart.

With extraordinary close-up recordings of his life as a vet, the bird population, the wildlife, the sea and the shore, veterinarian Joe Hollins brings his time on the island of Tristan da Cunha to the ears of the Slow Radio listener.

Joe has recorded over 20 hours of close encounters with wild life and domestic animals, and this Slow Radio piece will take the chance to really zoom in on the incredible richness of sounds which he has recorded here over six months.

This is one of the most unique locations for untamed wild life and birds and this has enabled Joe to get right in there among the penguins, the seals, and the sea birds that cover the cliffs. He is also present at every part of the farmer's life - sawing the over grown horns of the sheep, birthing calves, and helping with the milking.

The landscape itself is as rich a sound terrain - from getting on and off the tiny boats, and fishing vessels, scrabbling down the cliffs or into the heart of the volcano itself.

This will be one of those rare things - an animal paradise for the ears.

Producer: Sara Jane Hall

Music from Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys Imaginary Songs From Tristan da Cunha by Deathprod

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - from the beaches and forests of Costa Rica, to the shores of Loch Ballygrant on the Isle of Islay.

With field recordings by Les Pratt, Bronwen Buckeridge, Chris Watson, and Stephanie Lyons.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - including a Swedish forest, a Dorset dawn chorus, and water lapping the shores of Lough Erne in Northern Ireland.

A journey on the Flying Scotsman with privileged access to the driver on the footplate.

Composer Iain Chambers takes a sound walk along Suffolk's River Deben, meeting avocets and curlew, and culminating in the musical sounds of Woodbridge boatyard.

Have you ever wondered what goes bump in the woods at night?

Hugh Huddy discovers the night time soundscape of a woodland in Suffolk by placing a binaural recording box in a tree and leaving it there overnight. Listening back to the recording, the secret life of the dark woods slowly reveals itself.

Producer: Cathy Robinson for BBC Wales

An antidote to today’s frenzied world. Step back, let go, immerse yourself: it’s time to go slow.

Listen to the sounds of birds, mountain climbing, monks chanting as you go about your day. A lo-fi celebration of pure sound.

An intimate, breath-close binaural portrait of the intoxicating Indian city of Mumbai.

Writer and poet Susan Richardson invites us to a seal pupping beach on the Pembrokeshire coast; a world that has inspired tales of shape-shifting selkie folk and mermaids.

We stand above a cove. The air is filled with the haunting cries of the grey seals below us, and a soap opera of their lives unfolds. Through the human-sounding calls of the pups, the grunts and splashes of the bull seals as they are looking to mate again, and the sea birds and lapping water, we're immersed in the sonic world of one of the most remarkable coastlines of Britain. Susan considers the mythical stories around the creatures through poetry and her own observations, the ways their lives have intertwined with human ones, and the ecological threats they face in reality.

Produced by Cathy Robinson for BBC Cymru Wales

A montage of music and natural sounds including whale song and Tundra swans.

A montage of music and natural sounds including an Antarctic fur seal and her pup, Yellow-billed storks, and a Himalayan snowcock.

Britain has lost 90% of its traditional orchards. So, seven years ago the villagers of Haselbury Plucknett planted a Somerset orchard: 35 cider apple trees, all old varieties with names as gorgeous as their colours - Kingston Black, Sweet Crimson King, Slack-me-Girdle. "Make sure a rainbow goes into your cider barrel," says Matthew Bryant, filling his bucket with windfalls. In the tin shed at the back of his house Bryant, the cider expert and author James Crowden and friends gather to turn apples into cider, in the slow old way - and Radio 3 gathers all the sounds of the process. Apples drum as they pour into an ancient apple mill. Someone cranks the wheel and crushed apples splatter out as pomace. Matthew and James layer straw on the cider press, built in about 1850. They spread the pomace on the straw adding layers to build the 'cheese'. As the crew screws down the beam, apple juice gushes. They wind it up again. Matthew takes a huge knife, cuts the splayed sides of the crushed cheese, placing the trimmings on top. The pressing begins again, the torrent of juice subsides until it drips like raindrops from a thatched roof. John Keats witnessed this 200 years ago. In To Autumn he writes: "Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,/ Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours." The juice goes straight into the barrels. "Just leave it," Matthew says. "The natural yeasts will work their wonders. As it ferments, it fizzes and hisses. When that singing has stopped, it's time to bung the barrel." The cider will be drinkable by new year, but it's best left until you hear the cuckoo in the spring. "What's wonderful," says Matthew , "is that that's when the trees are coming into blossom, and the whole thing is starting again." Producer: Julian May

A montage of music and natural sounds from the Abernethy Forest in the Scottish Highlands, coniferous woodland that is home to chaffinches, wren, willow warblers, mistle thrush, Scottish crossbills and more; we meet an Oscillated Turkey, native to the rainforests of Guatemala; we’ll warm your cockles with the sound of thermal mud pools at Poikili Hot Springs in Papua New Guinea; and from mud pools to marshland – we finish in Louisiana USA with the sound of cicadas and common grackles.

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - from the chirping of nesting seabirds on a remote island to night-time in the marshes of Trinidad, sounds from the banks of a mighty Kenyan river and the waking dawn in the heart of Southern India.

A journey in sound across the lands intimately associated with Al-Andalus, medieval Moorish Spain and Portugal. Starting in Granada at the glorious Alhambra Palace, we hear the running water of the fountains that adorn the palace as well as the sound of modern day Andalusia, with flamenco singer Juan Pinilla. We then move to Alfama and Mouraria in the old Arab quarter of Lisbon, where we hear the melancholic melodies of fado, as well as the trams that transport both tourists and locals around the city.

We then travel south, to Loulé in the Algarve, before crossing the sea to Morocco, and the sounds of the old Medina in Fez. It is the sound of the sea - across which invaders travelled and refugees and exiles escaped - that we end on.

In 1968 Redzi Bernard's mother arrived in Lalibela - Ethiopia's holy city - on a mule after an arduous trek through the mountains. Earlier this year Redzi recreated her mother's journey and when she arrived in Lalibela she discovered a timeless world.

Just before dawn on a Sunday, she enters an church complex - all below ground level - where hundreds of pilgrims gather in white robes, incense burns, and drums and incantations fill the air.

Ethiopian Orthodox priests lead ceremonies and devotees pray with eyes closed and palms stretched upwards. As day breaks, birdsong and light filter into the scene and slowly pilgrims start to drift away.

To hear Redzi's Ethiopian journey in full go to BBC Sounds and search for 'Journey of a Lifetime'

Think of the American South and one man-made sound plays out evocatively across the landscape: the horn of a passing freight train. For a century and a half it's been almost synonymous with the idea of America, particularly where the rural blends with the urban. In the city of Nashville, Tennessee - 'music city' - the last century has been accompanied by another signature sound: the honky tonk bar.

In this leisurely half hour, we witness the musical arrival of a freight train as it crosses the public highway into downtown Nashville. The rattle of the tracks and sonorous horn dissolve into the sounds of Broadway, the strip where every premises has windows open onto the street, spilling music out to draw tourists in. And between the bars, buskers plug the gaps.

It takes about half an hour to walk up and down Broadway from the Cumberland River - past honky tonks throbbing with Dolly Parton and Lynyrd Skynyrd covers, street renditions of Louis's Wonderful World and pedal-powered bars pumping out hits for bachelorette parties.

The sounds which compete for our attention within this cacophony provide as vivid a snapshot of contemporary Nashville as the freight train horn that sits so snugly within this cityscape, framing the downtown walk.

Produced by Hannah Dean with recordings by Alan Hall. A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 3.

A montage of music and natural sounds from farmland in Somerset where willow warblers, robins and swallows merge with the faint chirp of crickets; a group of white rhinos going about their daily business in KwaZulu Natal; a troupe of busy white-throated Capuchin monkeys in a Costa Rican rainforest; and the ethereal call of the bellbird echoing through a forest in New Zealand.

Renowned field recordist Chris Watson follows the sound of signal bells, and finds himself in a Gate Box on a stretch of the East Yorkshire railway, listening for trains and birds with signalman Dave Beckett.

A montage of music and natural sounds from a sunrise recorded in Cluny House Gardens in Perthshire; the call of a lyrebird captured in the eucalyptus trees of Hastings State Forest in southern Tasmania; a woodland in Minsmere, Suffolk where tawny owls, nightingales and cuckoos greet the early morning; and the mysterious hooting of a troupe of white-handed gibbons in Khao Yai National Park, Thailand.

In the fifth of five "slow-radio" walks in which writer Horatio Clare searches for Bach's footsteps - and his ghost - the route takes him from the village of Roseburg along the Old Salt Road to Mölln, and on to the city of Lübeck.

Artist and cultural geographer Rob St John joins presenter Will Abberley on a walk through the Pennines, untangling the idea of the dark and unsettling impression of eeriness in the English landscape.

Dusk to dawn at the Isle of Wight Zoo.

On the beautiful Sandown Beach on the Isle of Wight stands a historic fort, now home to the Isle of Wight Zoo. It is run by the Wildheart Trust, which promotes the survival of endangered species, and is well-known as a centre for rescued big cats who, along with pocket-sized primates and other even smaller animals have a starring role in this portrayal of the sounds of the zoo.

The programme moves from dusk, as the animals prepare for sleep, through the small hours of the night, when the silence is punctuated by the sound of snoring, to dawn and the beginning of a new day.

A montage of music and natural sounds from the world’s northernmost freshwater lake in Siberia where you’ll hear the calls of Lapland buntings, oriental golden plovers and ptarmigans. We also visit Ein Bokek Canyon in Israel, where the chirps of graceful warblers compete with the rasping sounds of Tristram’s grackles. Then we head to Dyfed in Wales, where an early morning chorus of chaffinches and wrends is joined by the gentle bleating of sheep and lambs on the hillsides. We end in Tanzania, and the Olduvai Gorge, where calls from slate-coloured bou-bous and yellow-necked francolins combine with the distant braying of donkeys and far-off spotted hyenas.

Episode 4/5. In 1705, the 20-year-old Johann Sebastian Bach set off from his home in Arnstadt to walk 250 miles to Lübeck, there to meet his hero, the composer and organist Dietrich Buxtehude.

In the fourth of five "slow-radio" walks in which writer Horatio Clare searches for Bach's footsteps - and his ghost - Horatio Clare searches for his footsteps - and his ghost - the route takes him along the banks of the River Ilmenau from Medingen to Bienebuttel.

Nightingales singing, with musicians responding to them, in the Sussex woods. They are joined under the trees by Clive Bell playing bamboo flute, and by folk singer Sam Lee. .

Composer Iain Chambers takes a sound recording field trip around Orford Ness in Suffolk. This site – an isolated shingle spit on the Suffolk coast – once played a key role in the UK's development of radar and ballistics. Since buying Orford Ness from the Ministry of Defence in 1993, the National Trust's policy has been one of 'managed decline' – these buildings are now overrun by nature. The excitement felt by Bletchley Park's wartime codebreakers was once felt here too: Britain's greatest scientific brains; 400 civilians; the unacknowledged thousands of Chinese migrant workers, were solving a singular puzzle: how to build a nuclear weapon. Bomb-making justified as deterrence. Today, Orford Ness gives an insight into what a post-apocalyptic built environment might look and sound like. Air ducts once used to ventilate missile laboratories now burst open, exposing the packed nests of roosting birds. This programme takes listeners into buildings that are otherwise out of bounds, revealing the abundant wildlife now ruling the roost in the bomb ballistics buildings – we hear seagulls 'playing' the buildings with their cries; bees and skylarks; baby jackdaws duetting with the crunch of gravel footsteps; external metal stairwells transformed into aeolian harps: giant wind chimes peacefully intoning their pentatonic melodies towards the slow-moving vessels on the horizon. Producer: Iain Chambers An Open Audio production for BBC Radio 3

A montage of music and natural sounds from a canal in The Camargue where nightingales and swifts greet the morning and from an oasis in Oman where cinnamon-breasted rock buntings are singing happily near a gentle waterfall. We also take a journey along the South Tyne in Northumbria, and as the water bubbles away you can hear the calls of crossbills, meadow pipits and a goshawk. Finally, there’s a dawn chorus and a dramatic thunderstorm on the Parana River in northern Argentina, close to the borders of Brazil and Paraguay.

Immerse yourself in this river setting with Petroc Trelawny - with sounds of the Severn recorded along, and within, the flowing water.

Nathaniel Mann joins lonely seafarers on a container ship for some modern sea shanties.

Slow Radio for Radio 3's Along the River week. Musician Tim Shaw and producer Julian May collaborate with a Northumbrian burn to create a piece - The Water's Music

'He made his habitation beside the water's music'. This line, from a poem by Martyn Crucefix, lodged in the mind of radio producer Julian May, inspiring an ambition - to collaborate with a brook to create a composition. By moving rocks and logs might the sounds of the stream be adjusted, 'tuned', and might a piece of music slowly emerge?

Tim Shaw is a sound artist and musician based in Newcastle. After auditioning several he finds a musical burn on a moor in Northumberland. He and Julian May record the sounds it makes, from the tiny tinkling trickle near its source to its disappearance under a bridge of resonant drainpipes, via niagarous waterfalls and sombre pools.

They intervene, building a ladder of rocks to create a chord as the water flows down. They use hydrophonic microphones, recording underwater to capture the music of the burn from its bed. They tie these hydrophones to bits of wood, letting them drift downstream as 'sound pooh-sticks'. There is life here; in a pool by the burn they record strange pings, the sounds of tiny aquatic creatures. Sploshing about in chest high waders they stretch a rod across the burn with microphones attached at intervals along it. Recording first one, then another they create stepping stones - in sound.

In the first part of the programme Tim and Julian gather the sounds and explain what they are up to. They then present the composition they (mostly Tim, the musician) make out of this, a piece in three movements for Northumbrian burn, rocks, logs, hail and aquatic beasts, a piece of slow radio -'The Water's Music'.

Producer: Julian May Sound Artist: Tim Shaw

The magical North Pennines landscape of deaf shepherd-poet Josephine Dickinson, which is the backdrop to her real and imagined sound world.

A montage of music and natural sounds from a dawn chorus on a lakeshore in southeast Sweden, the liquid call of the Australian magpie from a mangrove swamp in Queensland, hippos grunting and splashing in Malawi’s Shire River, and skylarks singing overhead while curlews intone their desolate cries around Deadwater Fell in Northumberland.

Episode 3/5. In 1705, the 20-year-old Johann Sebastian Bach set off from his home in Arnstadt to walk 250 miles to Lübeck, there to meet his hero, the composer and organist Dietrich Buxtehude.

In the third of five "slow-radio" walks in which writer Horatio Clare searches for Bach's footsteps - and his ghost - the route takes us through the beeches of the Oderwald and on into the town of Wolfenbuttel.

Welcome to another Slow Radio podcast.

In this episode, there are the mesmerising sounds of storm Erik tearing through the rigging and halyards on the boats in Blyth harbour, Northumberland.

We glide to Ouse Washes in the Fenland country where Bewick's swans, coots, lapwings, reed buntings and skylarks fill the air with song.

And in the evening heavy seas of Gossabrough on Yell Island, Northern Shetland, there are eiders, Arctic terns, fulmars, skylarks and wrens.

The music includes Tom Waits’s No One Knows I’m Gone performed by The Unthanks, Troyte (Elgar’s evocation of a thunderstorm), Hoagy Carmichael’s Skylark, Alan Hovhaness’s Prayer of St. Gregory and Jim Ghedi’s folk masterwork Fortingall Yew.

Radio 3 transports listeners to Trinidad, just off the coast of Venezuela, immersing them in the sounds of the Caribbean island, with writer and actor Elisha Efua Bartels as a guide.

Through the sounds of three Port-of Spain gardens - her home by the river in Diego Martin, a garden in the lush valleys of St Ann’s, to a house up in the hills, Elisha reflects on the rich tropical sounds of the island. Frogs, hummingbirds, parrots and occasional rainfall form a slowly shifting, vivid soundscape. We pass through cycles of warm sunshine, then heavy tropical rain, each change reflected in the types of calls we hear from the birdlife and frogs. These aren’t rarefied idylls though - on a warm evening parrots noisily flock through, disturbing the peace. Sometimes a radio or the sound of a party drifts up from the valley below; dogs bark, cockerels crow.

Elisha describes the extent to which she’s both sustained by, and living at the mercy of, the wildlife around her – the parrots so loud she can’t hear the TV, the frogs soothing her to sleep at night - and how the sounds evoke a strong sense of 'home' for her.

A montage of music and natural sounds from ravens on the Norwegian tundra around Tromso; upwelling of cold water currents at night in the deep waters of the Pacific Ocean off the Galapagos islands; a MacGregor’s bowerbird in a New Guinean rainforest displaying its vocal talents to attract a mate, and the splashes of ice laden water moving and lapping on the shore of a river on Hokkaido Island, permeated by distant calls from goldeneye and whooper swans passing overhead.

Travel writer Horatio Clare walks in the Black Forest in Germany, thinking about the Romantic tradition of the Wanderer, and observing the sights and sounds of the forest

The slow build of a midsummer dawn chorus in Snowdonia, North Wales, interwoven with the sounds of the brooks, streams, and rivers that creep through the hillsides down to the lake by the village: this programme is a tribute to the landscape and past poets of the heart of Snowdonia.

An isolated farmhouse near Trawsfynydd was the birthplace of the iconic Welsh shepherd-poet Hedd Wyn. But there were hundreds more like him in this mountainous corner of Wales: the sons and daughters of tenant farmers, artisans and workers, who left school at 14 but were nurtured by the community, the chapel and the eisteddfod system, and emerged as writers skilled in the craft of strict metre poetry.

They left behind englynion – short poems in restricted syllables (like haiku), that often describe the landscape. Punctuating the serene Trawsfynydd soundscape, we intersperse englynion, by poets from the area, hearing them first in Welsh, and then in English. The poems, written a century ago and further back, draw on ancient traditions, and distil visual images into gems. Hedd Wyn’s most admired is translated as: “I have walked by sweet streams in the nervous wind of the hill pastures, the sunlight a white arm about the old neck of the mountains.”

The impression is of a landscape haunted and re-populated by the poets that were moved during their lifetimes to write about their extraordinary surroundings – land they often worked hard on and tended themselves, and knew intimately.

With readings by poet and musician Gwyneth Glyn

A montage of music and natural sounds from a nightingale singing in a reforested WWI battlefield in Belgium, a sunrise over Wolverton Creek in north Norfolk with curlew and pink-footed geese, the Ngorongoro mountain crater in Tanzania with tropical boubou and weaver birds, and a national park Karnataka, India where you'll hear croaking frogs and wild gaur bellowing to one another.

A montage of sounds from the forests around Squam Lake, New Hampshire during the Fall, including the songs of the Carolina wren, red-breasted nuthatch and rufous-sided towhie; a Northern flicker tapping insistently on a tree trunk; red squirrels and chipmunks foraging for food, a pair of loons calling distantly from the misty lake and a barred owl hooting as it begins its nocturnal hunt.

Irish cows make their way up to the winter grazing grounds high above Galway Bay

Episode 2/5. In 1705, the 20-year-old Johann Sebastian Bach set off from his home in Arnstadt to walk 250 miles to Lübeck, there to meet his hero, the composer and organist Dietrich Buxtehude.

In the second of five "slow-radio" walks in which writer Horatio Clare searches for his footsteps - and his ghost - the putative route takes him into the Harz Mountains and up to its highest point, the Brocken Summit.

Horatio Clare retraces the 20-year-old JS Bach's 250-mile journey to visit his hero Buxtehude in Lubeck. Episode 1 of 5. This is a repeat of an episode originally published in December 2017.

Have yourself a serene little Radio 3 Christmas with the sounds of reindeer, festive music and a secret, enchanted wood. This special edition of the Slow Radio Podcast comprises two very different audio recordings. The first is of reindeer, and more of them than you’d need to pull even a very high profile sleigh. No, this recording, contributed by BBC Four, is of 2,500 of the creatures as they slowly migrate, clinking their bells and eating. And the reindeer are followed by a December sunrise recording made by Chris Watson of Holystone North Wood in Northumberland. Listen out for tawny owls, chaffinches, blue tits, robins and carrion crows.

Benedictine monks speak about their experiences of divine love against a background of chant and sounds that evoke the peace and serenity of the monastery.

This episode of Slow Radio was originally podcasted in October 2017. We're grateful to the monks of Pluscarden Abbey for access to their collections of plainsong.

Benedictine monks speak about how they find focus, against a background of chant and sounds that evoke the peace and serenity of the monastery.

This episode of Slow Radio was originally podcasted in October 2017. We're grateful to the monks of Pluscarden Abbey for access to their collections of plainsong.

Benedictine monks meditate on the subject of work - from cooking to weaving and beekeeping - against a background of chant and sounds that evoke the peace and serenity of the monastery. This episode of Slow Radio was originally podcasted in October 2017. We're grateful to the monks of Pluscarden Abbey for access to their collections of plainsong.

Monks from Downside, Belmont and Pluscarden Abbeys meditate on the subject of prayer, against a background of chant and sounds that evoke the peace and serenity of the monastery.

This episode of Slow Radio was originally podcasted in October 2017. We're grateful to the monks of Pluscarden Abbey for access to their collections of plainsong.

Monks from Downside, Belmont and Pluscarden Abbeys meditate on the nature of silence, against a background of chant and sounds that evoke the peace and serenity of the monastery.

This episode of Slow Radio was originally podcasted in October 2017. We're grateful to the monks of Pluscarden Abbey for access to their collections of plainsong.

Kalahari means ‘large thirst’ in the local language and between November and February summer temperatures can reach well over 40 degrees centigrade. To avoid the dry desiccating heat much of the wildlife has adopted nocturnal habits.

Wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson captures the changing soundscape from dusk to dawn, when you can see very little but hear everything; from the close up sounds of insects to the far-carrying contact calls of spotted hyenas.

Producer Sarah Blunt

Spoken in the remote forest region of Älvdalen - a place thick with forest and steep valleys - Elfdalian used to be the main language of the area, but Swedish has increasingly become dominant and few young people speak it today. In this slow radio edit, we hear a collage of forest sounds and local voices, travelling through Älvdalen, exploring some of the mysteries of the language and its links to Sweden's ancient, Viking past.

Step into Sherwood Forest at night with tawny owls calling to each other in the trees. As daylight comes, a flock of long tailed tits forages through the branches.

Nestle for a while with coots, moorhens and bearded tits from a reed-bed in Humberside, clapper larks rising up from the grasslands of the Kalahari, autumnal sounds of squirrels and nuthatches from the woodlands in Virginia and a spooky Hallowe’en soundscape from a churchyard in Bedfordshire. And there are short excerpts of music by Elgar, John Barry, Amy Beach, Steeleye Span, Edward MacDowell and the Ahmad Sham Sufi Qawwali Group.

The sounds of battlefields across the world today – from the Somme to the USA, and Afghanistan to Vietnam. Presented by the BBC’s former special correspondent, Allan Little.

A meditation on the meaning of time, whilst wandering through the largest collection of clocks in the country.

Calming birdsong and the crunch of leaves from the New Forest in spring.

Escape from the frenzy of today's world with the dawn chorus from an orchard in the Cotswolds, warblers and skylarks in a Japanese paddy field, and the sounds that accompany the sunset over Florida's Everglades.

Get surrounded by nature - birdsong, rustling leaves and the stillness of the forest.

The music of typewriters, steam engines, foundries and looms. These previously-familiar, now long-forgotten sounds transport us back in time, evoking memories, and creating a strangely meditative effect.

Composer Iain Chambers creates a radiophonic sequence from the huge recording archive of the pan-EU Sounds of Changes project, a collaboration between 6 major European museums to document the huge change within our acoustic landscape.

Writer Chris Stewart takes us to meet some shepherds in the mountains of Alpujarras, plus introduces us to some of his own sheep. Featuring music from Nathaniel Mann.

The woods are the setting for a magical late night duet between a musician and a nightingale. Verity Sharp eavesdrops on shakuhachi player Clive Bell and an unseen yet vocal co-performer.

Nick Luscombe heads out for a late night trip across ‘sleepless town’, Tokyo’s ancient entertainment district, known for it’s bright lights, late night drinking dens and seedy back streets. Armed with his recorder and a local friend for guidance, Nick captures the sound of an all night batting range, late night video game parlours, robot restaurants and Tokyo’s underground as well as the odd character of the night.

Excerpts of this recording were originally broadcast on Late Junction on the 24th April 2018.

Renowned artist, field recordist and environmentalist Jana Winderen has returned to record natural sounds in this area for many years. In this recording you can hear her capture an icy, dripping brook and hibernating tadpoles beneath the snow. Originally broadcast on Late Junction on BBC Radio 3.

A hyper-real sonic journey through Japan's multifaceted soundscapes. With recordings of the natural environment, human activity, domestic sounds and noisy video arcades plus many of the wonderful ceremonies that are intrinsic to modern Japan. All captured by Nick Luscombe over 20 years.

In 1705, a young composer embarked on an epic journey to meet his musical hero.

Johann Sebastian Bach was just 20 years old when he set out on foot to walk the 250 miles to Lübeck, home to the great composer and organist Dietrich Buxtehude. Horatio Clare retraces the young composer’s steps in an immersive episode of BBC Radio 3’s Slow Radio podcast.

This episode of Slow Radio is adapted from Bach Walks, a five-part series on BBC Radio 3. For more information and to listen again, visit the Radio 3 website.

People with dementias and their carers talk movingly about their everyday lives. This edition of our podcast is a collaboration with Wellcome Trust’s Created out of Mind - an interdisciplinary team of scientists, artists, musicians, broadcasters and clinicians. The voices were originally recorded by Susanna Howard as part of a series of podcasts called Talking Life.

The poet Helen Mort and her friend Andrew walk from The Old Dungeon Ghyll - a famous hikers and climbers pub in Great Langdale - up to Raven Crag where they climb Middle Fell Buttress on a very wintery day at the end of July.

The sounds of a walk along Offa's Dyke, with Horatio Clare.

Sounds of the sacred from around the world, introduced by Neil MacGregor.

A 20-minute watery odyssey - idling down the Tennessee River with the best thunderstorm in a tin shack you are ever going to hear... and some frogs…

In the company of Betty Goines, who grew up on a shanty boat during the depression, Wes Modes takes his recreated shanty out on to the river, to gather stories for his Secret History of American River People project, and to live a life under the cosy tin roof of his shanty - close to the water, and all the elements..