Bloto

After a three-year hiatus from releasing new music, Błoto knew they had to make up for the long wait with a flood of fresh material. Their fruitful recording sessions at Studio Pasterka produced a wave of new tracks - like mushrooms springing up after the rain. These sessions have already brought us two 7" singles, the Grzybnia LP, and now, rounding off this chapter, comes the final piece: the album Grzyby (eng. Mushrooms).

Anticipation for new Błoto releases reached a fever pitch. Vinyl collectors quickly snapped up all copies of the singles Szlam / Ścieki and Bakteria, the latter featuring a guest appearance by DāM-FunK. In less than six months, nearly all copies of Grzybnia were sold out - setting a record pace for Astigmatic Records. In the meantime, the album was nominated for a Fryderyk Award in the Alternative Music category. Though Grzybnia didn’t take home the prize, Błoto did win a Fryderyk for their track “Godzina W”, featured on the WAWA album dedicated to the Warsaw Uprising. It’s been an electrifying time for the band, filled with shows across Poland and abroad.

Grzybnia laid the foundation. It emphasized the importance of collaboration and the collective spirit - just as mycelium builds connections between plants in the forest. Since its release, not much has changed around us. Societies still fall short of functioning like mycelium. If anything, the global situation has worsened. The idea behind Grzybnia was to present an alternative to egoism and individualism. Yet today, it seems even harder to find common ground. We build more and more walls - first within our own families, then in increasingly polarized social bubbles, and ultimately at political levels. Perhaps those political forces are what trickle down and rupture our social bonds? This is where Grzyby comes in. What can the fruiting bodies of fungi teach us? They are in constant communication, using the mycelium’s vast underground network - the “internet of the forest.” Dialogue, negotiation, and communication should be the antidotes to polarization. In uncertain times, we must learn to connect beyond our divisions.