The Dustopian Frequencies imprint has developed an enviable knack for curating themed compilations. I most recently wrote about Insects, which was focused, as its name deftly implies, on artists contributing sound works inspired by the imagined stories of specific insects. Split over two volumes, Celebrating The Bat does something similar, only this time the label’s curatorial gaze is trained on bats.

It is a vast and, if I’m honest, initially daunting project. There are 44 artists here, making this a mammoth set of volumes to work through, filled with familiar names and many that have totally passed me by. It is certainly worth the effort to listen to this all, however. The first volume (Darkness Falls) was intended to evoke the idea of the sun slowly setting, ushering bats out from their daytime hiding places into the darkening skies, while the second compilation (Into The Night) seeks to document bats as they dominate the night sky, hard at work hunting, right through to daybreak.

On the first volume, highlights include tracks by HDRF, MikeKSmith, Giants Of Discovery, Justice, Exit Chamber, Rawtrachs, Lukas Fraktal, PG Warren, Moston Priory and All O’May. There is a sense of accumulating darkness in these pieces. Across the first volume you hear lots of drones, grim tones and skittish, randomised sounds that evoke both the sonar communication methods of the bats, and also the dizzying way in which they skim, flip and perform head scratching acrobatic manoeuvres rapidly through the skies. Two tracks which occupy a determinedly different space come from Foster Neville, whose ‘Phoebus Denied’ offers a brief and mournful theremin elegy fringed by buzzing, metallic sounds, and Pocket Dimension, whose ‘Lady Jacaume Of Bayonne’ presents a sparse post-punk electronic cut that would have found a welcome place in the early Mute or Rough Trade catalogues.

Where the first volume feels somewhat brooding and sinister, the second feels, in some ways, more obviously celebratory. Where some tracks approach the bat’s mystique and mystery, there is a sense of joy in a track like 30 Door Key’s ‘Bat(Amax)’ which springs and hops along on wonky rhythms and melodies, while the spoken word contributions on Autumna’s ‘Interceptor’ makes the point that most experienced aerobatic pilots would love to pull off the moves that bats are able to perform so effortlessly. These tracks join other superb pieces by Warmfield, Hexham Wolf, svefn, The Music Liberation Front Sweden, M. Francisco, Trevlad, Scholars Of The Peak and Bernard Grancher.

Postscript

I have two bats which used to visit our garden but who I didn’t see at all in 2025. They reappeared a few weeks ago when we enjoyed a brief run of evenings that were blessed by entirely clear skies.

On one weekend day during that period, the temperatures had been so unseasonably warm that we’d been able to hang some washing on the line. In the evening, I went outside to get the clothes in just as the pair of bats started their elliptical dances right above my head. It was thrilling to watch and to feel a brief but perceptible rush of air from frantically-beating wings, sometimes right by my ear.

I went into the lounge and gushed about what had happened to my youngest daughter, who looked uncomfortable and slightly circumspect – fearful, almost. In some ways, the two sets of very different reactions – my amazement and my daughter’s discomfort – sum up the two sides of this collection; the dark and the light. It makes me think that bats have been given a pretty bad reputation, mostly thanks to Dracula, The Lost Boys and countless other films derived from Bram Stoker’s root idea.

What Dustopian Frequencies have achieved here, in a highly maximalist way, is to rescue the industrious bat from mischaracterisation. Celebrating The Bat offers, across 44 absorbing, evocative and smartly-executed tracks, a reverential celebration of these wonderful and frequently misunderstood creatures.

Celebrating The Bat Chapter 1: Darkness Falls was released April 2 2026. Celebrating The Bat Chapter 2: Into The Night was released April 17 2026. Both releases were issued by Dustopian Frequencies.

Shameless Plug: The Music Liberation Front Sweden released ‘Even Though It Was The Blink Of An Eye, I’m Sorry For What We Have Become’ as part of The Impermanence Project, part of my Mortality Tables collaborative endeavour. It can be found here.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2026 Further.