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: TQ 0854 8826
Grid square: Ruislip
Duration: 1:00
Recorded by: IM Rawes
Recording date: 27 June 2009
Time of day: 3.30pm
Location: OS grid reference TQ 0854 8826. Arlington Drive.
Description: Quiet residential street. Sounds of a woman tending her front garden, birdsong from trees lining the street, distant traffic, faint and indistinct voices.
Technical guff: Stereo. Audio Technica BP4025 mic, Fostex FR-2LE recorder.
Additional notes: A very pleasant couple noticed the microphone's windshield and came out of their house to talk. They said that the trees in the street were filled with ring-necked parakeets in the mornings, and they weren't too fond of those birds' raucous screeches.
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.