A DIFFERENT WAVE LENGTH
STUART HYATT hears music everywhere he goes. He hears an uplifting rock song in the collective voices of children counting to 100 inside an empty grain bin. He hears a pop tune in the raucous sounds of wildlife as he and his crew traipse through the Brown County woods looking for Sasquatch. He hears a hip-hop beat in the police sirens on Washington Street in downtown Indianapolis. And as he sits in his Broad Ripple home, he can almost pick out a dance-track duet between the squirrel scratching at his window and the hammering of a construction crew working next door.
Though that last one might just be a sign of Hyatt finally succumbing to COVID-era cabin fever.
Like most people in 2020, Stuart Hyatt is feeling a little stir-crazy. Quarantined at home, he’s trying to work from his office in the garage while accommodating a spouse and two kids who are stuck at home with their work and studies as well. Unlike most people, however, the musician and artist is also trying to promote a new album. “It’s just a weird environment in which to release creative work,” he says via Zoom, sitting at the control panel of his garage studio, his reddish-brown hair disheveled. “I almost feel guilty for asking people to pay attention to it.”
Asking people to pay attention is something Hyatt hasn’t done much in his career. He’s the first to admit that recording squirrel sounds and police sirens is less than commercially viable. He’s not a touring musician who can make money on ticket sales or merchandise. He insists on pressing each project onto vinyl and wrapping it in elaborate packaging, sometimes even accompanied with a hardbound book or lavishly illustrated comic, cutting into the margins of any record sale. Hyatt is also notoriously generous in divvying up the budget among his vast roster of collaborators. And his work is almost entirely funded up front by grants or commissions from museums and state tourism boards, so at least from a financial perspective, it really doesn’t matter if anyone’s listening to the finished product or not.
“NINETY-NINE PERCENT OF THE POPULATION HAS NEVER HEARD THIS SOUND,”
HYATT SAYS OF THE BAT CHIRPS ON ULTRA SONIC.
Even so, people’s ears seem to be perking up lately. The National Geographic Society funded his latest project, which received an extensive and glowing review in . Pieces from Gizmodo and followed. Interestingly, the album for which Hyatt is receiving this attention is his most unassuming to date. In fact, it’s built on a sound so high in frequency that the human ear can’t hear it: the echolocation calls of the Indiana bat.
