The Light underground car park consists of three large concrete-walled levels beneath Leeds city centre, under the shopping and leisure centre of the same name. The centre contains a swimming pool, cinema, restaurants, shops and gymnasium, and while I have no idea which – if any – of these feed sounds to the underground levels via a large number of piping and conduits, the result is a rich variety of sonic micro-environments, linked by a gently shifting drone of unknown provenance. I recorded there at around 7am one Sunday morning and managed to capture the environment without any moving vehicles or people, until security politely asked me to stop (which I did without argument). If you listen closely to the closing seconds of the recording you can hear the guard approaching.

There may be no good time to record the Dark Arches, the stretch of brick-walled tunnels beneath Leeds train station, between Hans Peter Kuhn’s permanent sound and light installation (fortuitously named Light Neville Street), past the three arches through which flows the River Aire, and out to the car park at Granary Wharf. The inverse is also true: perhaps all times are equally good. Positioned near a main road, nightclubs, bars and residential areas, and containing restaurants and a car park, this particular area is a common through-route with a dubious reputation. There are people coming and going at all times of day and night; record during the day and you’ll hear the rumble of trains overhead, cars and the bustle of people going about their business; record during the night and you’ll capture people on their nights out. My tactic was to record at approximately 4am on a rainy Monday morning, which sadly meant that no train sounds were captured. Instead, the recording predominantly captures the sound of the water in the tunnels, whether that’s dripping water making its way through the cracks overhead; the six distinctive flavours of surging river as it makes its way though the three arches on either side of the footbridge; or the ever-present white noise of the Aire’s background roar.

On both occasions I walked a route that was part planned, part spontaneous response to what I heard. Both recordings are presented untreated and in their entirety in order to preserve the manner in which the sounds relate to each other in the context of their environment.