The eye of the storm on Stromboli

A special field recording for us today. We were stranded on the tiny island of Stromboli overnight as a huge storm hit, meaning that all boat transport to and from the island was cancelled.

At midnight, I went out to record the sounds of the island and captured a fantastic blend of nearfield and far-off sounds.

In the field next to me, crickets were chirping away merrily. But hundreds of metres down the slopes ahead of me, the sea, churned up by the storm, was absolutely roaring, a deep bass drone.

The high end was concentrated close to me, with the bottom end of the sound clearly coming from much further away – it was a fascinating sound.

Long-time contributor Andy Lyon has taken on this Stromboli sound and constructed an entire song around it, building up drums, synths and pads all around the central field recording.

City version:

Memory version: