The streets of Warsaw open before you like a well-loved book. The sun still rests below the horizon, a light dusting of snow blankets the leaves in the Saxon Garden, and reflections of light dance on the Vistula River. But although you’ve read this story and walked these roads so many times, this time they twist and disorient you. The old pre-war plazas clash with the glass facades of the 21st-century skyscrapers. You wonder why you feel this way now. Is it because the world has changed around you without a care? Or is it because someone – a ghost now – was always by your side to help you understand?
This long-winded spiritual question marks the atmosphere on the ambient goodbye, world!, the debut record from Warsaw’s miffle (spelling and capitalization correct for both artist and album name.) Created over the past few years, miffle used a 4-track to warp tape loops into sonic and glitchy textures, stirring together elements such as their guitar, voice recordings, field sounds, and other natural voices and whispers from the aether. The result is eleven tracks that each have their own character, but blend into each other to symbolize the stages of a journey.
On the album, miffle captures the feeling of walking through Warsaw in the winter, with the cold wind and snow biting at your face and rushing against your ears, feeling almost peaceful even in the bitter air, until the city begins to wake up and the walls start to close in. Agoraphobia takes hold; as the sun rises, so does the blood pressure. No more can you take cover under the shadow of night. People start to emerge from their homes, from Metro stations, possibly perceiving you, judging you, wondering why you don’t understand how the world works. This feeling batters your brain until your feet – which have quickened their pace from a walk into a run – carry you home, slipping on the slick sidewalk while you beg the wind to push you just a little bit faster.
Such a feeling comes through in the track “long walk home (you exist in my memories forever)”, where the song rises from a soft drone and pipe ostinato into a rush of discordant static and noise that fills the ears and sinuses, peaking at a heart-rending scream of sound to symbolize the unbearable feeling of having to exist in a world that feels unwelcoming.
That one song acts as a microcosm for the album as a whole. The warping bells of “the city is calm at this hour” act as the opening bells, the calm reflection of a clock tower. Then the music swells to the rush of “digital blizzard”, with its muffled voices and rumblings that sound almost like music, but are really the conjoined mutant offspring of hundreds of phones blaring all at once. “losing interest in the things you love” fades in and out with sounds while a beep like an EKG sounds in the far distance, as if something is trying to stay alive.
Finally, the title track – the last on the album – begins with a deteriorating but peaceful guitar refrain of four descending notes, and as the static fades in and takes over, you hear the sound of a door opening and a cat meowing and purring. You might imagine this final note sitting on your couch and drifting off to sleep, the warmth of your home melting away the cold on your skin and in your heart, giving you the comfort you seek. And perhaps in your dream, you see the person who saw you, who guided you down those warping roads before they went away, leaving you to deal with the cruelty and strangeness of the world on your own.
Without lyrics, goodbye, world! still tells a story through sound, paints a picture of ennui, and transports you to an emotionally familiar place. One might recommend you start listening to this on a walk about forty minutes from your front door, to see how you feel as you let the static and hum in your ears guide you home.
Written by Will Sisskind
