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The British Library is home to the UK’s national collection of radio recordings in its Sound Archive. On 18th November 2010, the entire collection was handed over to and shared with The British Library, and is now a "named collection" within the Library's Archival Sound Recordings website. You can read more about this here.

15.05.13 - Placencia Bay - 16:32 - 320 kbps

Photograph: Peter Worth

Equipment used: 4 x Reson 4042 Hydrophones, rigged for MS recording, post-processed using Max/MSP; Nagra VI recorder.

Location: Placencia Bay, Belize.

Date: 13th December 2012.

Narrative:

After a long day of finicky experimentation in the sun, I returned to the bay to wash salt water from the equipment and to hose down. From 16°30'37"N, 88°22'1"W I looked out on a tranquil evening scene and decided to attempt one last recording.

I had recorded throughout the day in shallow coral seas off the coast of Belize. I’d attempted to capture a spatial impression of the clouds of clicks and pops produced by crustacea and who-knows-what; a sound present at almost every ocean location on Earth.

In the evening bay one boat was at anchor, a jet ski idled around and I saw a couple of tiny and distant fishing boats. Yet the underwater acoustic landscape was dense, quite different from the gentle evening scene that played out above the water.

I assembled this sequence of recordings to share my experiences of these two places. The recordings made among the shallow reefs are filled with crustacea sounds punctuated by communication calls between toadfish and an occasional dolphin.

Other impressions of this remote environment came to light when I auditioned the recordings back in the studio. The hydrophone rig became a barometer for other encounters. The tiniest brushings with what appeared to be fluffy fingers of soft coral revealed their harsh surface, rasping and gritty. As the evening currents shifted and strengthened “strumming” hydrophone cables conveyed the power of the underwater gales.

Many thanks to Francesca von Habsburg and the T-B A21 Academy for the opportunity to record in these places.

01.05.13 - Urban Dawn Chorus - 49:46 - 192 kbps

Recorded in Balham, south west London, from 0400 HRS 1st May 2013

16.04.13 - Live at The Exchange, Cornwall 12th August 2011 - 16:27 - 320 kbps

Unprocessed recordings of a 16 foot pipe organ - built 1861, standing in a 13/14th Century rural church in West Penwith, Cornwall), guitar feedback, unprocessed field recordings, ventilator and microtonal dubplates & turntables.

Field recordings from contained and reverberant spaces in the cities of Berlin (2007), Tokyo (2006), Sydney (1999), Milan (2008), Hamburg (2009) and Osaka (2006).

Live 8-channel diffusion at The Exchange, Penzance, Cornwall as a response to the exhibition "An Urban Silence" curated by Blair Todd. Diffusion through 8 Genelec 8040A monitors with 7070A & 7050B subwoofers courtesy of University College Falmouth/Dartington College & Rob Gawthrop.

Live room recording by Martin Clarke
Mixed and mastered by Robert Curgenven

Continue reading: Touch Radio 93 | Robert Curgenven

27.03.13 - Indian Storm - 22:31 - 320 kbps

Equipment Used:
Pearl MS-2 CL microphone outputting MS, matrixed in a Sound Devices SD302 mixer and recorded stereo to a Nagra BB+.

Location:
Camp Forktail Creek just outside the Corbett Tiger Reserve near Ramnagar, Uttaranchal, Northern India.

Date:
March/April 2009. [On a Wildeye trip to India with Chris Watson.]

Narrative:
After our evening meal of vegetable curry which followed a long, bumpy day in the Corbett Tiger Reserve (looking for... tigers of course!), we settled down to the sound of distant thunder. Our hosts advised that we took shelter before the rain started and soon after the short walk to my hut the first spots were falling. Recording equipment was hurriedly set up under the veranda and my hut-mate and I settled down on deck-chairs. After only a very short wait, with skipper frogs calling from the nearby pond, the rain started. Very soon the only sound was of rain and distant thunder and everyone, even the monitor lizard that lived in the thatch of our roof, stayed put until the storm passed.

Continue reading: Touch Radio 92 | R Martin Seddon

02.03.13 - Silo - 17:47 - 320 kbps

Photo: David Cowlard

Live at Silo 6, Auckland at the Audio Foundation’s Now! Here! Festival 12.08.12

A performance in one New Zealand’s most reverberant spaces, a complex of six disused cement silos on Auckland’s waterfront. Harnessing their amazing acoustics, Stanier Black-Five made a series of initial field recordings within the silos, which were then re-introduced into the same space as the source material for this live performance. All the reverb is natural. No effects were used.

Stanier Black-Five is the New Zealand-based sound artist and writer, Jo Burzynska. Her audio work is largely based on the manipulation of her own environmental recordings and found sounds, which she uses to create dense soundscapes that use sources such as the pounding rhythms of trains to the sounds of the earthquakes that have recently shaken her city. She also creates multi-sensory installations that combine sound and taste.

Thanks to the Audio Foundation for hosting the event, David Hornblow & Shaun Collins for the live sound & Malcolm Riddoch for the mastering.

Continue reading: Touch Radio 91 | Stanier Black-Five

01.02.13 - instamatic: blue mountains, new south wales, australia - 12:40 - 320 kbps

bower floor | dawn chorus with rain | canyon wires

music sits above and under the first impression.
when duration allows these things come into focus, increasingly.
in swifter moments a sense of quietude is possible.
still, finding pace with listening as a lens, moving

recorded september 2012, during time spent following a residency at The Wired Lab, this piece begins with two recordings playing at the same time. One of a bower floor, with contact microphones and geophone (nb. some of these low frequencies will not be audible via computer speakers) alongside a dawn chorus amidst light rain - drops falling centimetres from a conventional stereo microphone. Towards the middle of the piece, a further contact microphone recording enters, revealing one of the most bizarre fence wire sounds i've yet managed to gather. Despite returning to the same stretch of canyon fence several times, this particular effect was only present on one occasion and lasted for around 10 minutes. My best guess is that humidity and the rising temperature combined to create a momentary, unrepeatable and extremely evocative effect on the wires. It is this infinite and unpredictable aspect to listening in situ that continues to fascinate me. Getting closer to and underneath the surface of environments and spaces is a constant revelation, a constant pleasure.

jrf c-series contact microphones | jrf prototype geophone | sanken cuw-180

thanks, always, to Maureen and Pheobe and to Sarah Last and Dave Burraston (The Wired Lab)

Continue reading: Touch Radio 90 | Jez Riley French

06.01.13 - Live at The Audio Foundation, Auckland, New Zealand, August 11th 2012 - 22:33 - 320 kbps

Photo: Zoe Drayton

Recorded at the Now! Here! Festival to celebrate the launch of the book Erewhon Calling: Experimental Sound in New Zealand.

Mastered by Rachel Shearer.

Thank you: Zoe Drayton, David Hornblow.

Continue reading: Touch Radio 89 | Richard Francis/Rosy Parlane/Rachel Shearer

11.12.12 - Sea Palling: Wet mics and grey seals - 11:53 - 320 kbps

Photo: Sunouchi Motohiro

Touch's 30th Anniversary Event: A Sound Recording Weekend with Chris Watson.

Recordings of the sea made at Sea Palling, Norfolk, 8th December 2012.

Continue reading: Touch Radio 88 | The Sea