Show Notes
Recorded in the Spring of 2022, this soundscape has all the indicators of a warm day: pollinators, a variety of crickets, occasional frogs and a rich multi-layered display of bird song.
It's one of the quietest places I know, allowing an equally quiet observer to listen to all the layers and make up a sonorous composition of this place weaving it in one's imagination.
These are the most prevalent bird species one can hear in this recording:
Common Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos), Common Quail (Coturnix coturnix), Golden Oriole (Oriolus oriolus), Eurasian Collared Dove (Streptopelia decaocto), Eurasian Hoopoe (Upupidae), Corn Bunting (Emberiza calandra), Little Owl (Athene noctua).
The Montado is an unique system, existing only in the Iberian Peninsula although slightly different from the Dehesa, in Spain. As far as we know, human intervention has started during the neolithic period, favouring certain trees for their high yielding fruits that feed the animals, and others for their cork.
Despite such intricate connection and millennial relationship, the Montado is in decline; this system is incredibly fragile and faces a number of grave threats today, from diseases that affect trees and wild rabbits to overgrazing, to privatization of enormous areas of land for mono-crop exploitation, leaving the soil impoverished and triggering the increase of chemical use, which will then infiltrate underground.
Thus it is imperative and urgent to take care of this emblematic land.
More from Wind Is the Original Radio
The Earth's orbit around the sound finds itself at the point where we, from our planet, measure the sun's relative location exactly above the Equator's, making its way South. This marks the autumnal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and the vernal equinox and the beginning of spring in the Southern Hemisphere.
Solstice comes from the Latin solstitium - sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still): the moment when the sun appears to pause in its movement. A brief illusion of stillness. The longest day, the fullest expansion of light, and yet, from this very point, transformation has already begun. The brightest moment already carries the beginning of its own disappearance. Gathering recordings captured during different solstices, across distant places and years, this mix follows movements of appearance, disappearance, and return. Each recording holds a specific moment of listening, a fragment of a landscape that has already changed, a trace of something that cannot happen twice in the same way. Some recordings have been split and reintroduced at different moments, creating small cycles inside the composition. They disappear and resurface, carrying the memory of their previous occurrence while being transformed by their new surroundings. Like seasons, tides, or the movement of light, repetition becomes a way of sensing change rather than sameness. Different environments slowly orbit around each other: distant temporalities briefly aligning, moments of stillness revealing movement, and sounds returning as reminders that nothing ever truly stands still.
Welcome to the wind is the original radio podcast!
This hour long mix comprises of field recordings made on and around Spring Equinoxes of various years. It takes you down through the Northern Hemisphere – from my sitting room in East London to a cottage balcony in the tropical forests of Borneo. Listen for Slovenian jackals, Polish moor frogs, a Himalayan shepherd herding sheep, a hippopotamus getting ready for the night in Sierra Leone and choirs of birds singing across the globe.
We are delighted to share a special set by artist Asa 808, a 2-hour journey ideal to softly immersive oneself in the nature sounds, instruments and spoken word.