As Ben McElroy’s year-long audio project on Nottingham allotments continues, he has just announced the release of some limited-run physical cassettes.

Tapes #1 & #2 from January and February this year are now available to pre-order on recycled cassette, in compostable packaging. Just 30 copies of these are being printed, with home made, pen-written artwork including printed wildflowers found onsite and the original polaroids.

SIDE A – JANUARY – ALLOTMENT TAPES #1 – A DIFFERENT STILLNESS (WITH VAL TURTON)
This is the first instalment of a monthly series exploring St. Ann’s Allotment in Nottingham through field recordings, conversations and film/music. It is the oldest and largest allotments in Europe and, sitting close to the city centre, has a rich
and varied history. January’s instalment visits artist and gardener Val Turton, who very kindly shared her space for the project, as well as her wisdom on the space.

SIDE B – FEBRUARY – ALLOTMENT TAPES #2 – THE LUNGS OF THE CITY (WITH STEVEN ‘STENO’ VITALE)
The second instalment of Allotment Tapes visits musician and gardener Steno on the plot he shares with his partner Michelle. They took the plot on a few years ago and, like a lot of the untaken plots at St Ann’s, it was extremely overgrown…so a lot of work has gone into making it the space today, with veg patches and fruit trees amongst a lawn and space to jam and hang out! Steno plays in the Carnival Band (with Maddy Prior), with various theatre troupes, and composes his own songs.

Val Turton from January’s tape also returns, as she had too much plot wisdom to be squashed into a single month!

The cassettes are out on 2nd October — pre-order here.

The latest tape, released last month, sees Ben visit community garden charity Ecoworks and be shown around by Adam and Hawthorn (with some Woodpecker ID help and bell ringing from Yvonne and fussing from Muppet the dog). Listen/watch below.

All the previous tapes can be found here. Due on September 26th, September’s tape visits the huge plot of gardener and someone who ‘can fix anything,’ Steve. His space is quite different to a lot of the other spaces visited so far, filled with lots of sheds and soundtracked by the radio piped round the space using a complicated system of salvaged speakers and car stereo. He’s been there since the early 80s and has seen a lot of change which he mourns along with the declining bird population.

Ben introduced and contextualised the project for us back in April — read here.

Visit Ben’s website here / follow him on Substack & Instagram.