KIN-TU announces Echo in the Dark by Hanna Tuulikki and Tommy Perman
A new album and single series composed from bat echolocation and the human voice
Glasgow-based independent label KIN-TU announces Echo in the Dark, a new collaborative release by Hanna Tuulikki and Tommy Perman, composed entirely from bat echolocation calls fused with the human voice.
Originating as a ‘silent bat rave’ commissioned by Hospitalfield in 2022, Echo in the Dark is reconfigured in 2026 as a limited edition vinyl and full-length digital album accompanied by three singles. Drawing on fifty years of electronic music history, the project unfolds as both an experiment in sonic ecology and a love letter to dance music, inviting listeners to tune into the more-than-human frequencies of bats.
Most bats have evolved to use echolocation – a sophisticated navigation system based on emitting ultrasonic pulses and interpreting the returning echoes to build intricate spatial maps of their environments and prey. Though normally inaudible to humans, these frequencies can be translated into audible sound using heterodyne bat detectors, revealing clicks, buzzes, rhythms and warbles that might be mistaken for samples of electronic dance music. By transforming bat calls into dance music, Echo in the Dark invites listeners to encounter bats differently, not as creatures of fear or superstition, but as expressive, social and ecologically entangled beings whose hidden rhythms shape the night.
Each track on Echo in the Dark focuses on a different bat species from the British Isles, transforming recordings of their ultrasonic calls into beats, melodies and textures. Combined with the sounds of Tuulikki’s distinctive voice, the album creates an ephemeral human–bat hybrid sound world that moves between bioacoustics and club culture, blending EDM, avant synth pop, dreamy-soulful vocals, peppered with ghostly traces of 90s deep house, acid rave and hazy techno nostalgia.
Speaking about the release, Tuulikki and Perman say:
“The project asks what it might feel like to dance to music created from bat rhythms. Can tuning into hidden sonic worlds help nurture new ways of relating to nonhuman life? And can dance music offer a space to gather together and sustain radical hope in the dark?”
Originally experienced live through headphones in outdoor nocturnal settings, the work retains the immersive qualities of the original ‘silent bat rave’ while evolving into a richly layered recorded album. The project invites audiences to feel the beat, listen differently, and explore the space where species meet.
The vinyl is a special edition of 300 copies. Each sleeve features a bat-shaped cut-out, through which riso-printed inner sleeve artwork is revealed in an acid pink-blue colourway. Designed by Perman using drawings by Tuulikki, each sleeve is individually unique. The digital album also contains exclusive additional material, with a track featuring philosopher Timothy Morton, whose experience of massed dancing bodies informs their thinking on ecological awareness and entanglement. The Guardian described it as “A philosopher duetting with bats on a dance track? That’s seriously deep house.”
Launched in 2024, KIN-TU champions underground electronic and experimental sounds through boundary-pushing releases and interdisciplinary collaborations.