Mother's War

album 2026
(binaural - please use headphones for 3D sound)

available on most other digital platforms

Mother’s War is a collection of electroacoustic compositions by Girilal Baars. They were composed for various multichannel setups. For this album they have all been mixed as binaural tracks, so using any normal headphones will give the listener a good approximation of the immersive qualities of the original songs.

Tracks

1 Lykanthropos 15'20''

2 Ghosting the Machine 11'58''

3 R******d 5'02''

4 Mother's War 7'04''

1 Lykanthropos is originally an 8-channel piece. The title refers to the medieval Swedish ballad “Varulven”, “The Werewolf”. It is the story of a young maiden venturing into the woods and being set upon by a werewolf. She tries to appease the werewolf with her finery, but the werewolf is determined to have her. In desperation, she climbs a tall tree and screams for help. A brave young man comes to her help. And so in the end they both become victims of the raging werewolf. Lykanthropos could be described as an oratorio sans words. The 15-minute long piece is a retelling of the ballad using only voice and the transformation of voice material (with the exception of two short passages of theremin). Alongside the abstract re-telling, the idea is to create the emotional environment of the individual protagonists—the sounds outside their heads, as well as the sounds inside their heads. Maintaining a relationship with oral story-telling, the piece employs a “lead voice” structure and at times refers to the use of repetition in many of the traditional ballads of Europe. Lykanthropos was premiered at the Electric Spring Festival in Huddersfield, UK in 2013 and has since been performed in festivals around Europe and North America.

2. Ghosting the Machine is created around a live performance in Gdansk in May 2025. It has been created specifically for binaural listening, rather than multichannel playback. The instruments are voice, hurdy-gurdy and Wing Pinger. Ghosting the Machine attempts to juxtaposes human subconsciousness and “machine intelligence”. Something that has always been on my mind when performing live with any kind of technology, be it modern or old and decrepit.

3. R******d is an exploration and celebration of unwanted sounds – sounds and tones that have been purged from my other recording projects. Sounds that have been deemed unwelcome for a lack of sex-appeal or having the wrong aesthetic origins. These sounds have ended up on the wrong side of the ever-shifting line between what is considered good and bad sound. In short, they were discarded. The title can be interpreted as alluding to “redacted” or “recycled”. However, the intention is not simply to anthropomorphise unwanted sounds in an attempt to paraphrase societal trends. The work is also a frank examination of the tools and approaches within contemporary sound technology. The threshold for what is perceived as say “noisy” is shifting in step with the technological evolution of digital tools that make it possible to identify and isolate unwanted sounds. Perhaps even thereby affecting our general perception and interpretation of sound. R******d was premiered at NYCEMF in New York in June 2019 on a 16-channel system. In November 2019, the work was performed at BEAST in Birmingham on their 28-channel system. More commonly it has been performed in a quadraphonic format and can - if you like - be seen as a commentary on square thinking.

4. Mother's War is based on the my mother's fragmented memories of being born into WWII in The Netherlands. All the sounds are strings or voice, with the exception of a field-recording from the house in Haarlem where my mother spent the war. Voices were recorded using a carbon-mic of the kind used during that war. The claustrophobic and frozen nature of the music is an attempt at imagining what the ceaseless and suffocating fear of spending your first six years of life in a war would mean to a child.

This music was created in various multichannel formats. For the album they are released as binaural tracks - please use headphones to experience the 3D-sound as intended.

Nature Always Wins
NAWREC025

released 29 May 2026

composed, engineered and produced by Girilal Baars

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