At over 600 feet high, and visible for miles, this giant mass of steel pylon on Swanscombe Marsh on the Thames Estuary has a sister. They stand together, like monoliths either side of the sprawling Thames, holding up cables, and silently serving society's insatiable thirst for power.
After a shortish walk over the marsh from Swanscombe station, we arrived at the pylon on the Kent side bank. The ground directly beneath the pylon, in between its concrete footings, is flat. Barren, and crackling, under sharp pelting winter rain. Cold and already soaked, we unpack the audio equipment from our dripping rucksack and set up to record. As we pulled out its foldable legs, the mic stand oddly mirrored, on an atomic level, the skyscraper above.
We walked on along the new extension of the Thames Path and England Coast Path, and left the mics to record. Their job to capture, uninterrupted, this brutal sound landscape, and to whatever noises the pylon made.
The sharp winter rain. The spatial murmurations of this panoramic edgeland world. The rushing sometimes humming noise the wind fleetingly made, as it surged through the loftiest sections of the pylon (centre of scene). The deep pulsating rumble, that we later found (when speeded up) seem to be the long span powerlines, singing subsonically in the wind. A brutally beautiful day under Britain's highest pylon.
*The last time we recorded on Swanscombe Marsh (summer 2021) we heard a cuckoo. Amazing! This still surviving natural land is so much more than meets the eye. Listen to episode 77.
Listening to the longshore drift
65 Songs from the churchyard of St Mary’s Gilston
Waiting for skylarks at the Rye Harbour nature reserve
Taking forty winks at the seaside - Norman's Bay, East Sussex (sleep safe)
Mistle thrush sings amongst wind hushing conifers
A city at low tide (sleep safe)
Soundscenes of spring from the Derbyshire hills
A fallen tree on Galley Hill
Suffolk Wood (part 7) 2am - counting the chirps of a dark bush cricket (sleep safe)
Seaside brutalism - at the Port of Felixstowe
56 The whispering trees of Bayford Wood
Light rain beside the lane near Sandy
Sound-scenes of Norman's Pond as dusk turns to night - sleep safe
After the dawn chorus in the Forest of Dean
52 The balm of warm woodland in late summer
Garden birds under a silent sky
50 Singing beck below Black Hill (sleep safe)
Suffolk Wood (part 6) - 1am to 2am sleep safe with owls
Abney Park on Christmas Day in the morning
Quiet field by Young Wood
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