Recordings of background atmospheres and incidental noises from all over London. Many form part of a sound grid series recorded at evenly-spaced points across the city, each marking the centre of a square on the map below.
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Above: graphic based on a daytime satellite image courtesy of the Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center. Each red grid square is 2.5 miles or 4 kilometers across.
File name: Dartford scrambler bikes
Grid square: Erith, Slade Green, Crayford
Duration: 2:19
Recorded by: IM Rawes
Recording date: 18 October 2009
Time of day: Around 3pm
Location: Dartford Marshes, just east of the river Darent, overlooking the scrambler bike track.
Description: Sounds of scrambler bikes ridden by kids and youths, tearing around a twisty, purpose-built dirt track. One lad whoops with excitement after his bike veers off course and comes to a halt.
Technical guff: Stereo. Audio-Technica BP4025 mic and Fostex FR-2LE digital recorder.
Additional notes: The recording point just about falls inside the grid square, even though the borough of Bexley (and London) officially ends at the river Darent.
File name: Dartford clay pigeons
Grid square: Erith, Slade Green, Crayford
Duration: 1:00
Recorded by: IM Rawes
Recording date: 18 October 2009
Time of day: Around 4pm
Location: On the south side of the Thames, overlooking the clay pigeon shooting range on the Dartford Marshes.
Description: Loud pops and cracks from guns being fired at the clay pigeon shooting range. Echoes can be heard bouncing back across the Thames from a row of houses facing the river in Purfleet in Essex.
Technical guff: Stereo. Audio-Technica BP4025 mic and Fostex FR-2LE digital recorder.
Additional notes: The recording point was a few hundred yards beyond the easternmost boundary of the Erith/Slade Green/Crayford grid square.
File name: TQ 5211 7688
Grid square: Erith, Slade Green, Crayford
Duration: 1:00
Recorded by: IM Rawes
Recording date: 20 April 2009
Time of day: 1.00pm
Location: Slade Green Road industrial estate, by the junction with Freeland Way.
Description: Birdsong, a machine like an angle-grinder starts up briefly some distance away, a vehicle drives past, air-conditioning equipment starts up at a nearby packaging plant. Airplane drone, a dog's barking and a child's voice are heard faintly towards the end.
Technical guff: Head-worn stereo. 2 x Shure WL-183 mics. Edirol R09-HR digital recorder.
Additional notes: None.
Sound map recordings fall into two kinds, shown by the filenames they're given.
A sound grid recording has a filename beginning with the letters 'TQ', followed by eight digits. These are the Ordnance Survey co-ordinates for where the recording ought to be made. Each is part of a regularly-spaced series of recordings covering London. More about them, including graphics showing the resulting city-wide patterns of sounds, can be found on this page.
Other recordings have more descriptive filenames and these are simply of curious or distinctive sounds heard in different places.
