Recording Quiet Places: Interview for British Library Blog

There's an interview with me talking about Very Quiet Records over on the British Library Sound and Vision blog here. Thanks to Cheryl Tipp for asking!

Review of Bellever Quiet Walk

Nice review of the Bellever Quiet Walk from poet Tony Lopez ...

Friday evening, 26th April, Sara and I went on the Aune Head Arts Quiet Walk number 1, led by Sound Artist and Naturalist Tony Whitehead, 7.30pm to 10.30pm at Bellever Forest, just a mile south of Postbridge in the middle of Dartmoor. In the evening light we walked and ambled up woodland tracks near the Youth Hostel, taking plenty of time to stop and listen to the sounds of Dartmoor. It was a treat almost right away to hear our first cuckoo of the year in the distance at first, then it flew close by and continued to call. We saw a roe deer very close and heard chaffinches, wrens, blackbirds, greenfinches, sparrows, woodpigeons, songthrushes, goldcrests and other quite ordinary birds - but we really took time to listen and to hear all the calls. Higher up in a clearing we waited and listened for fifteen or twenty minutes for the last of the evening songbirds, and when the air changed as the light faded a songthrush's extraordinary repeated variations were echoed across the valley way into the distance.


     Then we walked higher up towards Bellever Tor on the forest track in among a group of about twenty Dartmoor ponies, snorting and munching, tearing at the grass. As it grew really dark we saw the first planets, Saturn and Mars, coming into view, and then the mass of stars. It was very cold when we stopped on a high ridge and saw a red glow in the distance that turned into a red full moon rising over the moor, the colour draining out as it lifted higher in the sky. Then we walked down a steep rocky path by torchlight back to the Bellever Forest car park and drove back through Moretonhampstead and Dunsford to Exmouth. What an amazing experience and great company, thanks to Tony Whitehead and Aune Head Arts.

http://t-lopez.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/quiet-walk-on-dartmoor.html

Bellever Quiet Walk

26 April 2013, Bellever Forest, Dartmoor, Devon.

Last night seven of us sat in silence in Bellever Forest and listened to the day's last song thrush sing as the sun set. Although it was alone, its voice echoed off the far slope of the valley; a duet of one. Then we walked up onto the top of the ridge by the tor and watched the full moon rise. The simplest things. 

Review of first Quiet Walk

Photo: Richard Povall

This was not intended to be a strenuous walk, the kind of walk that will always warm you up, but a ‘quiet walk’, a walk focussed on listening and being open and aware – on being, in fact. 

A lovely review of our first Quiet Walk by Richard Povall on his Start Bay Blog here.

Newbridge Quiet Walk

At just before dawn this morning seven of us set off on the first Quiet Walk organised by Very Quiet Records and Aune Head Arts. We followed Devon's River Dart upstream on to the edge of Dartmoor. Following days of rain the river was in spate, and quite impressive. The recording below, the first in a series that will document these walks, presents 60 minutes of fast flowing tumbling river as it runs through a deep valley on the edge of Dartmoor. Its static, white noise, but full of complexity and some rather impressive lower frequencies.

Radio Anywhere

Just finished the second of two training sessions on field recording with the good folk of Totnes's Soundart Radio and the Radio Anywhere project...

"Soundart Radio Anywhere is a new project from Soundart Radio 102.5fm, a licensed arts radio station in South Devon.

Radio Anywhere Ambassadors will broadcast from their homes, streets, neighbourhoods, towns and planet with Soundart’s amazing new studio-in-a-box.

We’re looking forward to hearing a wide range of new sounds and voices from many places, including school concerts, woods and rivers, Sunday morning church services, live shows from living rooms and kitchens, and village fêtes and meetings.

And hopefully all kinds of things we haven’t yet imagined."

For more info visit http://soundartradioanywhere.tumblr.com/about

Quiet Walk

A quiet walk invites participants to listen. To listen in detail. To find a place far from the crowd. A place where small things can be heard. A place where you can hear your own footsteps. A place where you can follow the sound a falling leaf. A place where other voices sing. We will not walk in silence. We will simply walk quietly and share whatever we hear.

On Sunday, 24 February, from 5pm to 8pm, Very Quiet Record's Tony Whitehead is leading the first of a series of Quiet Walks for Aune Head Arts - this one at Bellever Forest on Dartmoor, Devon.

These are an extension of the Very Quiet Records label. Each will be at a naturally quiet time, either at night or dusk/dawn.

More details and booking here