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BBC Radio 3


An antidote to today’s frenzied world. Step back, let go, immerse yourself: it’s time to go slow.

Listen to the sounds of birds, mountain climbing, monks chatting as you go about your day. A lo-fi celebration of pure sound.


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

Morocco Suite

Relax with a calming mix of music and natural sounds - from the Caribbean and back again via the rainforests of Queensland and the icy waters off Nova Scotia, Canada.

Includes listener recordings made by William Collinson and Julio Davila and BBC Natural History Unit recordings from Trevor Gosling, Mike Potts and Grace Niska Atkins.

Sounds of the Earth - December

Jarrow Slake is an expanse of tidal mudflats at the mouth of the Tyne with fascinating social and natural histories. The Venerable Bede lived and worked here; timber from Scandinavia was brought to mature in its ponds. In 1972 the Port of Tyne authority filled these in to allow factory development. Now cars built at Sunderland are stored at Jarrow Slake prior to export. Part is a post-industrial site, where land meets water and sky. It is desolate and little visited, and so there is a rich variety of wildlife, much beneath the water and in the mud, unseen and unheard.

For several years, the sound artist and composer Tim Shaw has been recording the sounds of Jarrow Slake, at high and low tide, at ground level and underwater. He captures the sounds of industry, of passing ships, the different birds, the wind and the water. And the astonishing musical noises of the tiny aquatic creatures. 

Sounding Jarrow Slake is a Slow Radio piece composed of these remarkable sounds, punctuated by bare fragments of information about the history - social, industrial and natural - of this remarkable place.

Producers: Tim Shaw and Julian May

Sounding Jarrow Slake

This Slow Radio feature takes us on a leisurely stroll round the park. Parks are always important but during the lockdowns they've become vital to people stuck in cities and towns. Children can still play in the park; grown-ups can still walk, run and even dance there.

When a smattering of snow fell in London recently Greenwich Park erupted with people - of all ages - pouring like lava down the icy slopes below the Royal Observatory, on sledges, tin trays, even grill pans. There were snowball skirmishes and snow sculptures appeared. It was a wonderful sight, and even more arresting were the sounds - the cacophony of joy.

The park these days is 'full of noises, sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not', the sounds of life and happiness. But, in the distance you hear, too, the sounds of sorrow - a church bell tolls and ambulances wail. Today's Slow Radio programme gathers all these - the birds, the dogs, the children, runners, boxers, ice, mud, rain, and the - almost - silence, capturing a winter's Sunday in the Park With...sound.

Producer: Julian May

The Sounds of a Winter Sunday in the Park

Take your ears on a binaural summer holiday through the Mallorcan town of Soller, from sunrise to sundown. The sleepy town awakes into market day, and tourists arrive at the Miro-decorated train station before climbing aboard the tram that runs through the town square down to the beach of Port de Soller. Night brings the local fiesta of St Bartomeu as the drums beat into the night in the town square.

Soller - We're All Going on an Aural Holiday

Composer Iain Chambers’s celebration of the domestic sound world, starting in the present day before travelling back in time.

Lockdown gave us the excuse to consider our own home environments in a new way. Household Gods takes this new focus further, exploring in depth and amplifying the sounds of domestic objects, arranged into a through-composed musique concrète work.

This is a joyful sonic celebration of the domestic environment, starting in the present day, and travelling back in time to explore earlier homes, through historic sound research and sound design.

At times the domestic sound world is bustling, at others a haven of peace. We hear the technology that helps us cook, clean, relax, eat, pass time. 

During lockdown, many of us rediscovered the hidden joy in the objects that surround us that we hadn’t properly considered before our enforced isolation.

Composed and produced by Iain Chambers.

Household Gods

With extraordinary close-up recordings of his life as a vet, the bird population, the wildlife, the sea and the shore, veterinarian Joe Hollins brings his time on the island of Tristan da Cunha to the ears of the Slow Radio listener.

Joe has recorded over 20 hours of close encounters with wild life and domestic animals, and this Slow Radio piece will take the chance to really zoom in on the incredible richness of sounds which he has recorded here over six months.

This is one of the most unique locations for untamed wild life and birds and this has enabled Joe to get right in there among the penguins, the seals, and the sea birds that cover the cliffs. He is also present at every part of the farmer's life - sawing the over grown horns of the sheep, birthing calves, and helping with the milking. 

The landscape itself is as rich a sound terrain - from getting on and off the tiny boats, and fishing vessels, scrabbling down the cliffs or into the heart of the volcano itself.

This will be one of those rare things - an animal paradise for the ears.

Producer: Sara Jane Hall 

Music from 
Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys
Imaginary Songs From Tristan da Cunha by Deathprod

Penguins v Seals - Tristan da Cunha

In 2017, audio producer Phil Smith travelled to Ukraine to attend his friend's wedding. There, somewhere between the cities of Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv and Odessa, he fell in love with the soundworld of the sleeper train: its steady hypnotic rhythms, the melody of hurtling through time and space, the calls of distant tannoy speakers drifting across platforms in the dead of night, the chorus of snores from sleeping passengers. Revisiting these recordings, seven years later, this Slow Radio journey offers echoes of a country in calmer times, when such trains were not a means of logistics transportation or symbol of desperate escape (as witnessed in the February of 2022) but conduits of restful imagining.

From the opening establishing shot - the sound of whistles and shunting engines, off in the distance - we are moved along in a river of wheeled luggage through the cathedral acoustics of a station building to take our seat in the carriage of the overnight train. The scenes are unhurried as bunks are unfolded and brief snatches of conversation overheard. We set off - a gentle accelerando of wheels and rails - and time stretches: there are no voices now, just the music of the train's motion through the night.

Produced by Phil Smith
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3

Sleeper Train

Relax with a mix of music and natural sounds, recorded by Radio 3 Sunday Breakfast listeners. Three dawn choruses from across the UK, starring woodland, garden and sea birds, follow on from the very different dusk chorus from the remote Greeenland town of Ilulissat, which features hundreds of huskies. Recordings made by Julie Moody, Alice Smith, Ted Reed and Michael Bawtree.

Sounds of the Earth - husky howls and oystercatchers

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

The Clock

City life and moments of calm – a sound portrait of Riley Square in Coventry, recorded with artists Georgiou & Tolley.

Coventry's Riley Square

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