Positive News · 9 hours ago

The Musicians Turning Bat Calls Into Club Music

When artists Hanna Tuulikki and Tommy Perman discovered that bat echolocation calls - clicks, buzzes, and syncopated rhythms normally beyond human hearing - could sound "easily mistaken for samples from electronic dance music," they recognized what Perman calls "an invitation we couldn't ignore." The result, *Echo in the Dark*, transforms the ultrasonic calls of eight UK bat species into a full-length electronic album, weaving Tuulikki's voice through the recordings to create what the pair describe as a human-bat hybrid sound world. The project began as outdoor "silent bat raves" at dusk, audiences dancing through headphones while the animals flew overhead - a quietly radical act given that nearly half of people in the UK hold negative feelings about bats. Rather than argue for the creatures' worth, the album trusts the oldest persuasion there is: rhythm, texture, and the way music can dissolve the distance between self and other. "We hope the album can use that power to nurture a different kind of relationship with the more-than-human world," says Perman - one rooted, as he puts it, in curiosity and care rather than fear.