Crickets, traffic, walkers, listening, wind beside the A4074 on World Listening Day 2010

This was recorded during a soundwalk I organised in 2010 to coincide with World Listening Day. I had been making a radio show about my commute between Oxford and Reading along the A4074 and decided to share my explorations of the complex web of sounds - flora, fauna, agriculture, drivers, cyclists, pedestrians - and the associated beings impacted on either positively or negatively by the road. This section of the soundwalk documents a moment where I was trying to understand the different scales of sound involved in the never-ending din of the road, and the delicate song of the grasshoppers and crickets in the field directly beside it. This is a recording of the A4074 road in Oxfordshire, but it is also a document of listening. The pauses in between the cars when you can hear the trees sighing in the wind seem somehow very precious...