Elevator Music 50: Andrej Bako—Love Letter to the Deep

Elevator Music 50: Andrej Bako—Love Letter to the Deep offers a sonic landscape exploring the undersea interactions of sperm whales (Physeteri macrocephali) as well as the communications—or miscommunications—between animals and humans. The whales’ rhythmic clicks are some of the many sounds of life that abound on the earth but until recently have gone unknown to humans, even as our choices impact the environments in which these creatures subsist. Bako has said of hearing whale recordings: “The percussive communication of the sperm whale sounded like an old computer keyboard, typing us out a message, trying to convey with an intense urgency some vital information.”

In Love Letter to the Deep, Bako has mixed field recordings of sperm whales—taken in the Antarctic by the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research—with modular synth and live performance, combined with his own field recordings from Iceland. By utilizing these scientific field recordings, Bako also calls attention to the crucial role of acoustics in understanding our world: sound can be recorded underwater from miles away, allowing scientists to better study distant marine environments and the potential changes to biodiversity and animals’ health and future well-being.