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: In Marrakech medina we take a walk through a maze of streets and stalls before arriving out onto the iconic Jemaa el-Fnaa square. Here, we’re met with the hypnotising sound of pungi flutes and, as the sun sets, of gnawa musicians, jesters and Said Anazoure’s intricate banjo playing.II. Largo: We leave the city behind to seek refuge in the mountainous region of Ourika. Here, we hear sounds of village life, as well as the distant voices of children reciting the Koran from behind the school’s door.III. Scherzo: Having crossed the Atlas mountains, we descend towards the Draa Valley and its oasis, tuning in to the sound of the palmeries just outside Zagora. As night falls, crickets take their place alongside the mating calls of cats under the stars.IV. Finale: We resume our drive, headed for a village outside Aït Benhaddou. A local family invites us to spend the night inside their tigmi, a traditional house, and attend an Ahwach ceremony with the musicians of Ahwach Asfalou.With special thanks to Hamid Boukhch, Said Anazoure, Ahwach Asfalou (Mme Ijja, Hiba, Iken, Oumaghlif, Bendrisse, Hanafi, Ait houssa, Tabrahimte, Belmadan, Mr Haji, Mr Ifliisse, Almsalla, Belaabass, Benhdouch, Boularia, Ait Bikouch, Khalfi) and Alexa Kruger.Produced by Andrea Campisi and Silvia Malnati A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3

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 out on the BBC, 100 years after London's most famous clock was first broadcast on New Year's Eve 1923.Featuring audio first recorded for the documentary Time Flies on BBC Radio 4, as well as new recordings and compositions built from the sounds of Big Ben's internal mechanism and ringing bells.Produced by Eleanor McDowall A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 3

Relax with a mix of music and natural sounds, recorded by Radio 3 Sunday Breakfast listeners. We start in the Himalayas and end in an urban forest in Dehli, getting there via Kardamyli beach in Greece and the Thames footpath in Oxfordshire. Recordings made by Naryndra Kumar, James Hadley, Kate Sandars and Michael Lidgley.

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. The lyrics speak of a beautiful female warrior who is turned into a dangerous mountain, divine punishment for her having asked a sentry to fire an arrow at her suitor.This song - sung in Italian by a local choir - frames our ascent on foot to the top of the North Grigna. As the singers recount the story of the warrior, warning us of the dangers of the hike, we pass through woodlands of beech and larch trees, and encounter small pastures where sheep and donkeys graze. There are rain showers, steep slopes, scree and snowy paths to battle and rare encounters with other intrepid Alpinists. The target is the Rifugio Brioschi, a wooden hut at the peak of the mountain where fellow hikers raise a glass and share tales from the climb before turning in for the night.With special thanks to the Coro Grigna for allowing us to attend their weekly rehearsal and record La Leggenda della Grigna, and to fellow hikers Hannah Mackaness, Monica Malberti and Valentina Rossini.Produced by Silvia Malnati A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3

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 nectar as they move from flower to flower, and clusters of bees jostling against each other inside a busy hive. The beekeeper releases puffs of smoke to calm his bees as he inspects their work and we can hear the subtle differences in buzzing between a colony with or without a queen.Over in the workshop, or ‘honey room’, we witness the processes that transform a frame of honeycomb into a pot of honey, from the spinning of the frames to the filling of the jars.A Tandem Production for BBC Radio 3

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 atop Crystal Palace and then moving through the country to finish in snowy Aberdeen, hear how the sonic landscape changes the further north travelled.Transmitter is a production from Munck Studios with Matthew Herbert for BBC Radio 3, recorded by Pete Stollery, Hugh Jones, Dan Pollard, Ella Kay, Robbie McCammon, Pieter Dewulf and Cameron Naylor.

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 recorded introduction by Sir David Attenborough.From there, the sounds of cascading streams and waterfalls give way to the call and shuffle of a common toad. Around the caves of County Cavan bats use sonar to navigate. Their ultrasonic clicks can be heard, slowed down. A cuckoo sings beside a chalk stream while a spider catches a pond skater in its web.The distinctive low call of the bittern introduces the Suffolk reed beds, where great crested grebes perform a mating dance, beaks clashing. Further towards the sea, a colony of knot are scattered by a peregrine falcon, and in the Shetland Isles, a sea otter grunts and snorts around the rocks.A thunderstorm at sea heralds a seal colony at Blakeney Point, Norfolk, where two males fight. Then the eerie calls of Manx shearwater, who visit each year from South America, are followed by the chatter of many gannets, in and out of water.The Corryvreckan Whirlpool in Scotland pulls us under for an array of fantastical subaquatic sounds: cuttlefish, sea gooseberries, melon comb jelly; the squelch of a royal flush sea slug, spider crabs leaving their shells, and the scream of a scallop, devoured by a starfish. Dolphins break the surface, and a bluefin tuna skims across the waves before we sail out into Cardigan Bay.Audio post-production: Wounded BuffaloSlow Radio producer: Sam HicklingWild Isles sound team: Sound Editors – Kate Hopkins, Tom Mercer Dubbing Mixers – Oliver Baldwin, Dan Brown, Olga Reed, Graham Wild

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 shrines, focussing their minds and alerting the deities to their presence.The deities, or murtis, as they are known in Hinduism, represent the different aspects of God - in the form of beautifully carved statues. They are worshipped and cared for as the physical representations of God.This episode of Slow Radio takes us to the Shree Sanatan Mandir, a Hindu temple in Leicester, where we recorded sounds from inside the temple across a whole Saturday. The mandir is one of the oldest and largest mainstream Hindu temples in Leicester, housed in a former Baptist chapel. There is one main ‘prayer hall’, home to 5 main shrines. But there are 17 shrines in all, representing the major Hindu deities including, amongst others, Krishna and his consort Radha; Ram and his wife Sita, his brother Laxman; as well as Hanuman, Ganesha, Shiva and Ambamata. In the wider temple building there are also other meeting rooms and halls.During the recording you’ll hear worship across the day - singing and prayer, readings from sacred texts, meditation for the women’s group and quiet times for private devotion or chatting to the priest. You’ll also hear Illa Majithia and Anil Chauhan from the temple committee explaining some of the sounds.But the programme starts with the sound of volunteers cleaning the temple at daybreak, as the priest opens the curtains around the shrines, waking the deities, before washing them, dressing them in fresh clothes and decorating them with garlands of fresh flowers brought by the devotees, who are gathering for early morning worship.Produced by Jo Dwyer. This is a Loftus Media production.

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 that journey we hear the sound world change and the increasing impact of human activity on the landscape - the wilderness of the high slopes replaced by the noise of tourism and traffic. There is an irony to the fact that the people who choose to visit the mountains because they love them are also contributing to their changing environment.These unique glacier recordings have been made by Ugo Nanni, researcher at the University of Oslo who specialises in the stability of Arctic glaciers, and field recordist Clovis Tisserand.Producer: Barnaby Gordon

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds: a walk in the Faroe Islands, a deer in the Scottish Highlands, a robin in Northamptonshire and a royal garden in Norway.Wildlife recordings from Chris Watson and Andy Fell, plus Radio 3 Sunday Breakfast listeners Louise and Donald Proven.

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

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.