In today’s episode we’re speaking with Simon Holmes, a musician from Edinburgh, Scotland, who — for this occasion — teamed up with the Portobello Drone Choir.

Simon worked on Segment 24, the penultimate stretch of the river Lech before it quietly dissolves into the Danube. When he read that the project notes described this section as “the Lech’s quiet goodbye”, he knew exactly where he wanted to go.

In today’s episode we’re meeting Rachel Larsen-Jones, a sound artist and wildlife sound recordist from Wales, who worked on Segment 4 of the river Lech.

Segment 4 is one of the most ecologically significant stretches of the river — a place where, between 2016 and 2022, a major rewilding programme called LIFE Lech restored the river’s natural dynamics, shortening groynes, removing constructions, and giving the water back some of its freedom to meander. It is the kind of place that makes you want to hike there.

In today’s episode we’re having a chat with Warren Anthony, a sound artist and musician based near Vancouver, Canada, who goes by the artist name Bleeptwig.

Warren worked on Segment 25 — the final stretch of the river Lech, where it meets the Danube.

He came to the project expecting to work with sound. He ended up working with sediment, threads, and the relationship between rivers and the cultures that grow alongside them. His composition, Sedimental Threads, pulls together field recordings from the Lech and from his home in coastal BC, weaving them into something that feels both local and universal.

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Warren also took part in the Connected Sounds initiative, a community-led project born spontaneously among the participating artists, who began voluntarily sharing sound bites from their field recordings and compositions for anyone to draw from. Warren used a sound shared by Bill McKenna, who worked on Segment 1: the very source of the river. From the first stretch to the last, the Lech flows through the music too.

Let’s hear it, in his own words:

The inspiration from this piece was firstly at the surface level - flow, time, motion - are all inspiring for musical exploration. As I dug deeper into the material, the concept of rivers as enablers to civilization, to history, added deeper layers to explore - how rivers slowly but inexorably shape ideas, stories, culture and music just the same as they shape land and place.I wanted to bring all of these ideas together into some way, while also literally exploring the sound material from the original recording using elements (like sediment) from prior pieces, to construct an evolving and moving piece that suggests a continuity rather than an ending.I hope those ideas come across as it builds to its conclusion. No spoilers.

Flow is a project by Dr. Martina Cecchetto, curated by Riccardo Fumagalli, with the scientific contribution of Dr. Florian Betz.

In collaboration with Cities & Memory, University of Padua (Italy), University of Würzburg (Germany).