Name: Mariska Baars aka soccer Committee
Nationality: Dutch
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, composer, producer
Current release: Mariska Baars's new album Eye is out via Morc. It features Mariska on vocals, guitars, effects, recording and mix as well as Wil Baars on piano and Niki Jansen on hardanger violin.
Recommendations on the topic of sound: I was so surprised to find out that the book I have been enjoying since my birthday and which was sent to me by my dear friend Rutger Zuydervelt, is written by you! And by Lara Cory: ‘Animal Music sound and song in the natural world’ I totally recommend it!
Many of your questions to me are related to zen buddhism, any book by D.T. Suzuki could offer something.

[Read our Rutger Zuydervelt interview]

If you enjoyed this Mariska Baars interview and would like to stay up to date with her music and live dates, visit soccer Committee on Instagram, and bandcamp.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

I experience my body as my decisive tool, working with sound. If a sound is not right for me I will feel nauseous immediately and when it is right I get a shock -physically- and just feel very happy.

When I listen while playing I tend to follow the sound as a shape. I usually have this when I listen to music focussed on loose tones. I feel that my listening and seeing are quite similar in the placement of a tone, or line.

With both of them I experience the space and the emptiness or silence bordering a shape or tone are very important. Especially when something slightly unusual happens, something that steps out of the expectation, something physical happens immediately which causes excitement, also coming from experiencing something you have not experienced before.

My eyes can be open or closed. Sometimes it is needed for the experience to look. Once I was in a cafe on a rainy Sunday morning, with music playing and I saw two little boys out on the other side of the street, walking backwards in a line, one watching and then copying the other, they completely fell in sync with some seconds of the music playing.

These seconds became eternal and my body was free from tension or gravity - at least that was my experience.

How do listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?

I notice with headphones there is an intimacy straight away. Through a stereo system -but especially when playing tones through an amp- the experience is much more physical, like your body is supported by the resonance and you’re able to experience that.

My headphones show all the details that are there in the music, which is also a nice thing. They’re both very different experiences.

Tell me about some of the albums or artists that you love specifically for their sound, please.

A Georgian television recording on YouTube I recently came across, ‘Gaprindi Shavo Merckhalo’ by ensemble Rustavi with solist Hamlet Gonashvili.

It sounds unbelievable to me, especially with the visual recording to it.



Loren Mazzacane Connors: Hell’s Kitchen Park; early Cat Power: The Covers Record (2000).



It’s clear that I enjoy sound that is not overproduced and where you can hear some of the surroundings in the recording, it kind of draws you into the space.

Do you experience strong emotional responses towards certain sounds? If so, what kind of sounds are these and do you have an explanation about the reasons for these responses?

I think a lot depends on context, like memories, visual and other stimuli, feelings ... but from a young age I felt drawn to guitar and the sound that always does it for me is both clear and slightly overdriven and resonating. It feels like it enters my chest physically and awakens me to a joy and also to feeling other emotions.

I love reverb, though it has to be just right and not take away from certain details. I have a focus on soothing sounds, sounds that allow your body to be present in a space, to let go of tension, to lower your heart rate.

The song where I feel I most achieved this is ‘No Turn To Harm’ (❤ / Lamb).



There can be sounds which feel highly irritating to us and then there are others we could gladly listen to for hours. Do you have examples for either one or both of these?

My nervous system is quite under pressure due to scar tissue from an operation high up in my back/neck on one side of my spine. High, squeaky sounds cause nausea and neurological trouble, so I find them very irritating.

On the other side there are many calming sounds that cause noticeable relief, like the wind coming and going like waves through the leaves of the high tree behind our house, also sounds of a river, or footsteps in the snow, the coots when the nature reserve is flooded in winter, a thin layer of ice shone upon by the sun, a soft spoken foreign language on the bus..

Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?

The whistling harmonica door on the train; our filter coffee machine.

And just last week several machines were being used outside -usually I don’t like the sound of construction work- but in this moment I thought a musical piece was coming through the bathroom window.

As I stuck my head out of that window I realized it was even more beautiful as it was a mix coming from many directions in the wide sky and it was really a one moment performance.

Have you ever been in spaces with extreme sonic characteristics, such as anechoic chambers or caves? What was the experience like?

In front of our house in the nature reserve is a big -slightly humid- space surrounded by high trees. The ‘roof’ is high up the biggest opening. Nobody comes in there, except for the animals - lots of birds. When trees fall, nobody comes to pick them up so it’s -sort of- wild and quiet.

But than the sounds of the birds ... their calls move beautifully through this almost closed (semi permeable) space. You can see how they slowly let themselves fall from one side to the other. It’s really a magic forest.

And recently I was in the very big Bavo church in Haarlem. After the organist played -which was interesting enough on its own in that enormous space- people started talking again and I was surprised how this sounded like a murmur, almost like whispering waves of sound.

Everything sonic happening in that church was an event.

What are among your favourite spaces to record and play your music?

I record and play in the bedroom, where all my stuff is. I like the intimacy.

To listen and work further on it, I also very much like to go outside, with headphones. I will listen during walks and work further on the train sometimes, in the silence compartment. I also work at home in the living room, when it’s quiet.

To perform live, recently I enjoyed small pop stages, dark black cubes, where the sound becomes very physical and people are close by.

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

Yes, definitely.

As mentioned before, I follow loose tones like shapes in the space. I think shaping is the word to describe that, rather than sculpting, but it’s mostly ‘watching things happen’ and then, for instance, adding another tone to see what happens. It might be the main reason why I love music in which silence is as important as sound, shape. I see directions as lines, too, when I listen, especially when composing on my laptop.

I made a little video with my mother years ago (around 2010). The song ‘Goat Song’ (from ‘soccer Committee’) is from 2005 and when my mother played the CD, she started ‘catching’ the tones to my surprise. 

Later on I asked her if she could do this in front of the camera and this time she did it in a different way, but still very much in a way that I am sure I got her genes in experiencing sound. :)

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds?

Years ago, when I slept in the garden house, after a big rain, the animal world came alive around me, the rustling in the silence that was there again. I like little sounds in silence.

Also when I literally ran into a young beaver during a run. It had been sitting under a fallen tree, got startled -so did I- and suddenly we were standing opposite each other, staring in each others' eyes. I can still hear the sound of the little step he made towards me.

And the calling cows in the nature reserve when they communicate over a distance with each other. Their sounds always move me. To me it sounds like a heart rending cry. If a human made these sounds, a big drama would have taken place, but the cows sound like this every day.

Many animals communicate through sound. Based either on experience or intuition, do you feel as though interspecies communication is possible and important? Is there a creative element to it, would you say?

Intuitively -my experiences have become part of this sense I guess- I'd say it is possible and important.

When you’re connected to natural life you take better care and notice things in your environment. It’s insane how we do not feel part of animal life anymore. The moment you notice an animal and the animal and you are aware of each other is touching, affecting, there is already communication.

To me it feels like it is about trust. Do we trust each other. It is highly responsive and this makes it already creative I think.

My recently released record ‘eye’ opens with a song ‘Into’, where the second part of the song consists of guitar sounds played by the open window of my playing/recording room.



I felt very in sync with the birds outside and like to think they were also responsive to the sounds travelling outwards from my window.

Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?

I do not have customized earplugs, so I guess I do not take precautions other than avoiding loudness. I used to go to loud concerts but luckily I do not suffer -yet- from tinnitus.

Hyperacusis is familiar though, but this came from the physical condition I wrote about.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

To me silence is something I regularly long for, to think, or just be, to reset. I do like to listen to sounds happening in the silence.

Sometimes I have to remind myself to play a record and totally enjoy that, too. For instance, play a record by Alemayehu Eshete and you’ll feel energized immediately, in a way that only music can.

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

When you’re attentively listening to what is there, it can broaden the world around you, your sense of space, as you can receive a lot of what’s happening quite far away and closer by. Individual people would do amazing things with it, as happens now.

The thing with space is that some people like to fill every bit of it, while others would like to leave it open. The first group will probably be dominant, so I guess people would find ways to fill the space ... so there’s an aspect I would not necessarily like when I think of organization of the shared space.