Happy new year! To kick off our 2016 programme of sounds, we’ve got not one but two pieces from the tiny volcanic island of Stromboli – one of the Aeolian Islands close to Sicily.

Despite not managing to capture the sounds of Stromboli’s eponymous volcano due to the incredible roaring winds at the top, we did collect some dramatic sounds on the island.

First of all, we were stranded on the island by a violent storm of torrential rain lasting more than a day, and causing all transport to the island to be cancelled.

Naturally, we recorded the storm and captured some of that ‘proper’ storm rain that you get in the autumn across the Mediterranean. Ian Haygreen took the storm sounds and created something ominous and threatening, blending in machine-like clanking and whirring with the original rain sounds.

City version:

 

Memory version:

 

Secondly, the beaches on the island – as well as being noted for their unusual volcanic black sand – produce a particularly deep, booming sound as the waves come in, due to the bottom of the beach being stones, and a sharp incline forming a lip where the sea comes in. This gives a particularly heavy, intense sound to the waves as they come in.

Michael McDermott reimagined the beaches of Stromboli on fire with his roaring, crackling reinterpretation of waves on the island’s beaches.

City version:

 

Memory version: