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In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche wrote, “Without music, life would be a mistake.” Mumia follows that trajectory in its quiet unfolding. It lingers, seeps in. There is no drama here, no display of unique feelings. Each side offers a unified meditation on stillness, numbness, and the beauty that exists within sadness.
Robert Pawliczek aka. Bobby Would offers an explanation for the events that inspired Mumia—a story that could easily be the material for a novel. Its eerie, tragic, and unresolved backstory serves as an invitation rather than a statement, creating space for contemplation. It is not a retelling or an indulgence in sorrow but a measured, almost ritualistic meditation on absorption and acceptance.
Would began working on Mumia in late 2020, after the sudden death of his close friend, artist Sven Sachsalber. Sven had come to visit Would in Vienna during the height of the pandemic but passed away mysteriously at his accommodation. Rumors spread, grief settled into something shapeless, and even though doctors traced it to a complex heart condition, uncertainty had already taken root.
At the time of his death, Sven had been painting Pantone cards of extinct pigments. He was fixated on Caput Mortuum, a deep iron-red historically linked to paintings of skulls. But he had confused it with Mumia, the ancient brown pigment once made from ground mummies and thought to hold some remnant of life within it. That mistake—two colors, two histories blending into one—became the conceptual thread in Bobby Would’s music.
The interplay between sound and color is not just metaphorical. The drones are sleek yet weighty, deliberate, drifting on the edge of perception. They move like shifting clouds, deep browns and iron reds dissolving into shadows—steady and measured, like thoughts caught in the haze of remembrance.
For admirers of visual music, Mumia occupies the space where sound and colour converge—where grief does not declare itself in pathos but hums beneath the surface, unwavering. The album creates a synesthetic experience where the mind paints with sound. Each side of the record reflects the nature of colour, with tones moving between light and dark, evoking the quiet presence of the lost. Mumia is like a moving canvas, where the soundscape serves as both background and foreground. Like a painting slowly revealed layer by layer, its sonic palette offers depth and subtle details that saturate and cool.
A conversation with Bobby Would leaves a similar impression. He speaks with compassion, open to the world of those he engages with—a quiet observer, tinged with dark humor. Listening to his work, I think of Barthes’ Death of the Author, yet Bobby's presence is undeniable, subtly woven into the fabric of his creation. His music holds memory, allowing the listener to contemplate their own. The drones stretch, hover, and fade. They do not rush toward resolution but settle into the weight of stillness—the kind that comes when grief no longer announces itself but simply exists. I notice myself breathing peacefully, listening attentively. I realize I need to get myself into that state more often.
Bobby Would has made an album that does not propose meaning but allows it to be found. And in that, it is haunting. It is reverent. It is, undeniably, beautiful.
--Ela Orleans
