The main problem associated with making recordings on location away from purpose-built studios is that no one can tell you what the problems will really be before you start. Even if a building is wonderful for concerts in late summer, the different circumstances of recording in autumn make it feel and sound like a completely different place. The weather is colder, there is a greater likelihood of rain and there may be a mains hum picked up on microphones through the electric cables, that would otherwise be completely inaudible. Crows may spend their daylight hours sunning themselves and jumping up and down on the lead roof, and visitors may come in to see the building (or to see if the notice saying "Please do not disturb, recording in progress" is a hoax) until darkness sends the birds and visitors away to roost. In concerts nobody is bothered by distant traffic noise, but though the road seems a long way away, motorbikes and cars accelerating up and down it continue to be a problem until about one in the morning. Recording can only start after darkness has truly fallen and then must go on until three or four in the morning, after which everything has to be packed away and removed from the Church before the next day's visitors. And nobody was aware of the mail plane from Norwich to Kings Lynn at 9.45 each night that always managed to coincide with a good take of a quiet slow movement. The advantages of recording in a location like Binham Priory are that it is a beautiful building with an acoustic that has a unique and wonderful quality, and a sound decay that does not disappear into urban rumble, but into the true silence of the countryside. Geoff Foster, the chief recording engineer at Air-Lyndhurst Studios in London, set up three microphones in front, one STC 4038 ribbon mike, and a stereo pair of MKH20 Sennheisers. As this was being recorded in 5.1 surround sound there were also two Neumann TLM170 mikes, thirty feet behind Benedict Cruft and twenty feet up in the air to catch the resonance in real time. When this recording is also released in 5.1 (the sound system that is used for all DVD home cinemas) the effect of bringing in these back mikes at a very low level is to reproduce the sound of Binham's rich resonance in any acousticly dead room. Geoff Foster, the producer, recording engineer and tonmeister for the six day recording project at Binham. Here he is with his semi-portable recording desk and monitors in the tiny vestry of Binham Priory. Quite a change for him from being the sound engineer at Air Lyndhurst Studios in London, where he has a state-of-the-art NEVE desk for the huge orchestra required for recording David Arnold's music for the last three James Bond films. Recording in Binham - Benedict Cruft rehearsing, while waiting for darkness and quiet in Binham, September 1998 Photographs by Katia Cruft