Lou McMahon Dead Sound Featuring Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg For your GRAMMY® Consideration in the Craft Categories (streaming) Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals Dead Sound is a symphonic, melancholy work by Irish composer and vocalist Lou McMahon, featuring the renowned Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg. Dead Sound was composed with adoration, love and hope for our world. The Atlantic Ocean deeply inspires the music. Dead Sound is composed and arranged by Louise McMahon (Lou), including the lyrics, and performed by Lou with a 50 piece orchestra. The work was recorded at Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam, Germany, in October 2025 as part of the Live Score Berlin initiative by Audiocreatures. It was released independently on August 1, 2026, following its world radio premiere in April 2026 on Schöne Töne, Radio Eins, hosted by Sven Helbig. Dead Sound is part of Butterfly Wars, Lou McMahon’s ongoing body of contemporary orchestral works, spanning everything from small ensembles to full orchestra. The work sits somewhere between avant garde, orchestral and contemporary classical music, and through this process Lou’s solo voice choir has become a very important part of her creative practice, including as the solo voice atmosphere in the video game trailer, Pacific Drive: Whispers in the Woods. The song Dead Sound was written during cold-water swims at Seafield Beach in Quilty, County Clare, Ireland, in the winter of 2024/25, alongside the artist's dog, Mack. The sky is grey and white like the feather of a gull, fluffy overcast, with a hint of rain. Pale blue hues, golden sand and sandstone, seaweed slime lime green and browns, mucky purples, and furry moss, the dirt of the barnacles, ropes and winkles. The coastline trees and long grasses are shaped by the westerly winds. The side of the country looks like it's in-shock. The dog is running and sniffing, wild Irish hair in my eyes. That's the visual. My dog, Mack, is a companion on these journeys to the beach and a co-quester of all things Mother Nature. The simple joy of watching him run around as the happiest little guy is a gift. There's a vibration among the scent of seaweed and salt that carries on the wind, from the waves onto the rocks, veiling the skin. The subatomic particles of all of this—and of us humans —from the sky to the earth, offer a sanctuary for thought and sci-fi possibilities. Particularly at that time, on global anxieties and the human experience of limerence. Being with the ocean became inseparable from the musical ideas, no matter the distance Ireland - Germany. Empathy for our planet informs the entire project, carrying through to the orchestral arrangement, the music video, and the eco-conscious activities of the Butterfly Wars project. I took the song ideas from the beach back to my bedroom and developed the material through acoustic guitar, voice, lyrics, melodies, and layers of solo vocal textures, calling on a friend to contribute a double bass drone. I used Reaper and an AKG C214 to capture the ideas. That process became the beginning of Dead Sound. The original song runs for more than seven minutes and contains multiple verses. For the orchestral work, I selected and transformed material from these verses. In October 2025, Dead Sound expanded into a work of science fiction for orchestra and vocal textures. Please find the original lyrics written on the beach then that I selected Dead Sound orchestra from: oo I am dead sound Particles All around Littered All around My internal crowd Mouths wide open echogenic voices choking Drinks the ocean My compression In the headphone Effervesces Fill up Balloon [gasp] oo I am dead sound Particles All around Screaming All around My internal crowd Wants you deeply Effervesces Bubbles over industrial Buildings crumble The world is drowning Atomic bomb The world is drowning na-na-na-na-na na-na-na-na To wake up beside you na na-na-na-na Plug into me baby na-na-na-na-na ah-ah-ah alien Na na na To wake up beside you Plug into me baby alien Na na na To wake up beside you Plug into me baby alien oo I am dead sound Particles All around Littered All around My internal crowd Unspoken Adrift in frequency Apart and All around Effervesces You don’t know me Anyway High rise buildings Floating upward Atoms scattering the ground The world is drowning now The world is drowning now The world is drowning The world is drowning… I want you deeply Apart and all around Plug in to the sound Wait """ © 2024 Louise McMahon. All rights reserved. Written by Louise McMahon. From acoustic concept to Sci-fi orchestra... The connection between our time at the ocean and the song led to transform Dead Sound into a cinematic work of science fiction. The credits for the orchestra recording of Dead Sound are as follows: Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg Lorenz Dangel, conductor Recorded as part of the Live Score Berlin initiative by Audiocreatures Lou McMahon, composer, orchestrator, vocals and lyrics Markus Zierhofer, Organizer Falko Duczmal, recording engineer Alexander Wohlfeil, recordist Felix Trawoeger, assistant engineer Roger Montejano, mix and mastering engineer Paul André Fortin, artwork, videographer, dancer and choreographer I arranged and prepared the score in Berlin during the autumn of 2026. It was composed for orchestra, featuring flutes (1–2, with 2nd doubling piccolo), oboe, bassoons (1–2), horns in F (1–2), trombones (1–2), trumpet, percussion, and strings (Violin I, Violin II, viola, violoncello, and double bass). The score is structured in three short orchestral movements, resulting in a three-minute long composition recorded during a 30-minute long opportunity with the orchestra. It was recorded as part of Live Score Berlin, an Audiocreatures initiative focused on music for video games. I intentionally crafted the score in three movements to leave room for creative development after the recording session. This allowed me to layer a solo voice choir in post-production and provided the flexibility to introduce additional solo instruments should the musical direction call for them. Movement 1 — Sci-fi I wanted to make a science-fiction atmosphere using the natural timbres of the orchestra and voice. It is a portrayal of global anxiety. The work unfolds gradually, opening with solo voice and strings before expanding to winds and brass. Throughout the score, the orchestration remains deliberately spacious, allowing individual timbres, textures, and musical gestures to retain their distinct character. Inspired by both the vastness of the ocean and the invisible forces of the atomic world. The intention is to create otherworldly sounds using entirely acoustic means. The opening movement culminates in a timpani strike followed by a cymbal crash, evoking both the immense force of Atlantic waves and the destructive energy of an atomic detonation. Expansive brass crescendos, often built from sustained single notes growing from mezzo forte to forte, suggest an endless sense of space and scale. The string writing incorporates techniques such as sul ponticello and glissandi, while the flute employs extended techniques including flutter tonguing. Together these sounds aim to make textures that feels alien species creature-like. The vocal parts were added after the orchestral recording and became an extension of the compositional process. Rather than pursuing a polished vocal sound, I approached the voice as an expressive instrument, shaping it to feel fractured, soft, and fragile, reflecting the vulnerability of the human figure within the song. The breath of the anxious. The vocal performance was developed through experimentation with the physicality of the voice, including variations in tongue position, singing with both open and closed mouth, chest tapping, and controlled breath crescendos, I ended pitches with exhaling the breath left in the note. These techniques were informed as much by my own body's nervous system at the time embracing it aesthetically rather than as imperfect. I wasn't feeling very well. For the opening phrase, spanning the first two bars of the work, I tried something peculiar. I used saline spray in the nasal passages to encourage a wetter, more expectorant vocal quality that tries to evoke the sensation of drowning. This was a highly individual compositional experiment undertaken for this specific recording and is not presented as a standard singing or vocal-training technique to be replicated. The resulting vocal texture is intentionally fragmented, damp, and alien. I just tried a few different things in effort to create an unfamiliar sonic entity through the voice, to compliment the work's science-fiction atmosphere, with the creature strings and flute. Sometimes I inhale sharply. If you have ever been cold-water swimming in just your swimsuit, you get a sudden shock from the cold that can make you take a sharp breath in. I wanted to capture that sensation in the voice. I positioned the science-fiction elements of the work somewhere within the ideas of quantum science. I have been interested in quantum physics, although I am not a scientist. There is a lot happening with atoms within the work. I heard Prof. Brian Cox say "When you look up at the sky, you are looking at where we come from". Thinking about the vastness of the unknown — within the ocean, within ourselves, and within the sky — it is overwhelming to consider the fragility of mankind and the destruction we are capable of. Also the word "ALIEN" is hugely inspiring for sci-fi meanderings. This is the sci-fi... its somewhere there in entanglement... but fiction... Movement Two — limerence The second movement develops the relationship between the orchestra and the song, the melody, lyrics, and accompaniment. It is more about the delivery of the song being with human experiences; in this case the complexity of limerence. When considering the unknown of everything, how far deep does human emotional complexity go? In the area of senses and love -- "limerence" as something rather unknown and untapped, though felt by many probably. "wants you deeply" The accompaniment ebbs and flows. The emotional world moves from sadness and feeling alien to oneself, into an unsettled internal world and a worry for the external world, moving toward desire, lust, and longing. This lust is formidable and effervescent, like bubbles in salt water. Where the ocean floods the city through climate change, there is a paradoxical weight to the obsession. The voice inside that cannot speak begins to bubble, and we are drowning now — externally and internally — with this catastrophe of the unexpected and unknown: love? It speaks of worlds, as video games also speak of worlds. It being a work of sci-fi from Butterfly Wars, which is a video game concept. It returns to despair. It is a kind of a love horror, thriller. In the Atlantic, particularly at Seafield Beach, the waves wash up a creamy, foaming salt that almost sizzles into the shore. It’s gorgeous. In the initial writing, this crossed over with the bubbles of losing one’s breath underwater, as a feeling of something difficult to admit — a human experience. The hues of being on the beach suggested that the arrangement should not become overly complicated. Instead, it should move with the natural ebb and flow of a tame ocean, without too much frill or frolic — a brass introduction with a string section accompaniment and I selected the below lyrics from the initial verses. It was important that the lyrics "Wants you deeply" hang in time, away from the accompaniment, because it triggers a mood change. The string section gets a little brighter, lustful and hopeful. Lyrics: I am dead sound Particles all around Littered all around My internal crowd Wants you deeply Effervesces bubbles over Industrial buildings crumble The world is drowning now Movement Three — Hope
Allegro The final movement features flute, piccolo, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, horns, trumpet, trombone, and strings. The feeling is of running toward the sun. The final burst moves toward love and hope, as the grey begins to turn into pale blue. The solo voice choir returns as a significant element, bringing a renewed energy, from the initial texture in movement 1. It is mildly triumphant, due to the fragile nature of song. Like a photosynthesis, running creatures toward the sun. This is the work from my perspective of composing it and feeling it out. I hope the listener interprets it in weird and wonderful feelings from their perspective. The Solo Voice Choir: Lou McMahon the solo voice choir on the video-game trailer Pacific Drive: Whispers in the Woods, in collaboration with Markus Zierhofer. This vocal work is described by Polygon as a “haunting drone choir” This solo voice choir concept is an important compositional practice within Lou's work and “Dead Sound”, where the voice operates as singer, choir, texture, and atmosphere. Lou will present live demonstrations and technical analyses of these vocal techniques at upcoming industry events, including GameSoundCon in Los Angeles and Games Ground Berlin 2026.