Eerie vigil with Shag Rock blowhole, nr Perranporth — laid-back

Powerful blowhole jets just below us, with a weird 'breathing' sound coming from a little cleft beside us — it sounds for all the world as though this little headland is alive and sleeping, and at some point will wake up…!

To hear this to best effect you need high-grade headphones, and to have the volume setting about 3dB above a sensible normal level for a realistic rendition of symphonic orchestral music.

The page presenting my first recording from the tip of the Shag Rock headland, on 11 January 2014, gives a relatively detailed description of that real 'wow' experience in gathering January dusk.

I made this recording on 15 March 2015. This time I was aiming to get more of the 'subterranean' effect of the blowhole sounds, such as I'd been hearing during that January 2014 session while I waited well away from the recorder, having a hushed conversation with a couple of anglers on a rough rather uneven platform area just slightly back from the cliff edge so that we weren't hearing the blowhole directly, but instead were hearing it as these amazing muffled deep 'subterranean' whoomphs and rumbles.

So, placing the recorder on that same platform area was my expectation, but first I poked around there to see if there might be a still more interesting spot to get that 'subterranean' effect. It was then that I came upon another little platform area, that steps down towards the quite close west-facing cliff edge, and listened for a few minutes. By rights this oughtn't to be a good spot because immediately to my left was a bit of cliff face rising up, which was blocking off the sea sound on that side. However, between me and that little bit of cliff was a small shallow cleft, from within which I was hearing a periodic breathing-like sound, which really seemed quite eerie.

That sound was synchronized roughly with the audible blowhole activity, and clearly was issuing from a little crack in the rock in the bottom of that cleft. The resultant recording captures the experience pretty well, though the swell was relatively modest this time, so the performance was relatively laid-back. Surely a very nice backdrop for some people to get to sleep, despite those crazy whoomphs!

Lower photo of a more recent and much more highly-charged recording session at the same spot. The 'breathing' cleft is partly visible, to left of recorder.

Techie stuff:
The recorder was a Sony PCM-M10, with Røde Deadkitten furry windshield (original, more effective version), and it was placed on a Zipshot tripod (not what you see in the later photo here).

Initial post-recording processing was to apply an EQ curve to compensate for muffling from the furry windshield, and much more recently it's had stereo widening / sharpening processing to 200% width with A1 Stereo Control VST plugin, then a 7dB EQ tilt away from the treble (straight line from no change at 100Hz to -7dB at 8K) to compensate for the treble overemphasis caused by the stereo widening.

Please remember to give this recording a rating!