Over the years I've recorded many sounds in different locations around the world. This collection of recordings aims to highlight the unique 'voices of a place'.
Well its been a strange, challenging and on occasions difficult few weeks as the world has come to a stop around us, people have been pulled into their homes, businesses have closed and the shutters drawn. Replaced now by a surreal quietness. Human kind with all the noise and hurry and motion, with all the endless building and travelling and business, its conversations and transactions, its hum of daily activities, its very normality, has suddenly and for a period still to be determined, stopped. Involuntarily we have been silenced. A quiet has fallen across the streets of emptied cities. Everyone is inside. The coronavirus has travelled across the globe and overtaken everyones lives. We here in the UK exist in a strange lockdown, where there is sunshine and early spring, blossom and fresh leaves, but behind that is the sound of distant sirens, face-masks and hand washing and uncertainty, an awareness of our health service facing unprecedented pressure. We hold on.
For the past couple of mornings, way before sunrise, I have slipped away in the darkness from the nearby flat where my little family sleep, my microphones and field-mixer slung from one shoulder and a coffee pressed into the other hand, I rush along and into the narrow pathway I have used a thousand times over the years. At this time in the morning it is wet and sweet in aroma. On one side it has a long stretch of old allotments and on the other a steep bank to a brook and then across to the river and canal. The path is dotted with hawthorn, hazel, dogwood, cherry plum, elder berry and ash and all manner of beautiful plants grow in abundance from tiny blue petalled speedwell, purple anemone, blue bells, dandelion, bull thistle, yarrow, cow parsley and comfrey. It is a haven of songbirds and foxes, and hopefully for a long to come, my family and me.
Put on your headphones and enjoy.
https://soundcloud.com/timlewis77/united-kingdom-morning-chorus-river-lea-greater-london