“Life in Warp,” the debut album from A lake by the mõõn, a.k.a. Duarte Eduardo, is an opportunity to rethink what it means to be “socially conscious” when it comes to music. In what strikes the ear first as swathes of digitally manipulated noise and vaguely industrial, futuristic electronic free-balling, “Life in Warp” affords its listener a vivid and disorienting experience haunted by the sounds of a wide array of endangered animals from around the globe. That’s right—each and every byte of sound on the album, Eduardo states, “was created from field recordings of living beings that are, or have been, endangered since the beginning of the Anthropocene.” The result is something like wildlife-electronica—replete with walrus beats and humpback whale drones—but is so much more serious, devastating, and deferential. Everything you hear was already in some way first uttered by beings whose lives and ecosystems have been under extreme siege for decades, even centuries. Rarely is one’s listening experience shaped by such an unexpectedly potent sense of urgency, loss, and motivation to change your life and protect what remains. Proving that activist music can take any stance or form, what is most significant on “Life in Warp” is precisely this emotional resonance of knowing that all of these sounds came from someone in danger. Someone who, for now, may or may not still exist amidst our exploitative stranglehold on the Earth’s ecosystems.

The sheer effort required for such a cohesive sounding project of bioacoustic eco-futurism is staggering from a technical perspective, as is the task of isolating something like a “beat” and building around it subtle modulations and layers of accompaniment from literally dozens of different animals. When experimental music can take the voices of endangered wildlife and lodge them in your brain with rhythmic, pulsing fervor—an achievement especially prevalent on “Solarpunk” and “Utopia o caralho!”—you know you have arrived in a truly compelling landscape. As a wildlife conservationist myself, hearing this level of sincerity and intentionality lifts my spirits and gives me encouragement about ways of moving forward gracefully in this shrinking bestiary we’ve made of the world. It can be a simple and profound gift to encounter other wild souls who strive, as A lake by the mõõn’s Bandcamp page reads, “to manifest against the narratives of fatalism and of fake hopes.” This bizarre record of electronically manipulated animal sounds is real in the realest sense, and is, despite the serious overtones, an exercise in radical playfulness.

And, of course, Shouts! out to the following contributors with whom we stand in unwavering solidarity: walruses, giant sable antelopes, humpback whales, Bornean orangutans, albatrosses, Atlantic puffins, greater sage-grouse, Amur leopards, Malayan tigers, polar bears, Japanese meagre, gracile chimpanzees, Fortescue grunters, Asian and African elephants, wattled curassows, Galapagos carpenter bees, beluga whales, royal penguins, common eiders, golden frogs, Oaxaca hummingbirds, red pandas, hyenas, Asian lions, Mexican wolves, kakapos, red wolves, northern lapwings, Pernambuco pygmy owls, Karthala scops owls, Aruba island rattlesnakes, sea otters, Aldabra giant tortoises, Atlantic salmon, golden bamboo lemurs, mountain gorillas, saiga antelopes, and the Kauai O’o bird.

✊ ✊ ✊ ✊ ✊

𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗯𝘆 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘂𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗣𝗮𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗼𝗻! 𝗪𝗲 𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗼 𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮, 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽 𝘀𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗰 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝘀𝘁𝘀. 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗸 𝘆𝗼𝘂!