Błoto

A quartet based in Wrocław, formed by musicians from the band EABS, whose improvised compositions draw inspiration from the golden age of 1990s hip-hop and spiritual jazz. Their conceptual albums explore the negative impacts of human activity on the natural environment and social polarisation.

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Błoto, photo: Róża Sasor

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Błoto, which means ‘mud’ in Polish, was formed by chance – it emerged from an improvised session by some members of the Wrocław-based sextet EABS, but it quickly grew into a fully independent band. Its members are Marek Pędziwiatr aka Latarnik (keyboards and synthesisers), Paweł Stachowiak aka Wuja HZG (bass), Marcin Rak aka Cancer G (drums), and Olaf Węgier aka OlafSaxx (tenor saxophone and percussion). The driving force behind their music is rhythm – instrumental beats reminiscent of the golden age of American hip-hop in the 1990s, with illbient blending with spiritual jazz and echoes of club music. The band’s songs are created through collective improvisation.

The first emanation of Błoto appeared in 2018. Marek Pędziwiatr recounts the band’s early days:

None of us expected this band to form. We were touring with EABS, and some of us arrived in Tricity for a concert the day before. We slept on a golf course and didn’t have much to do, so one of us suggested that we record something. Our bassist, Wuja HZG, tapped into his network of contacts in Tricity and managed to book Grzegorz Skawiński’s Maska Studio. Grzegorz welcomed us warmly and left the studio at our disposal. We recorded approximately an hour and a half of improvised music, which differed from what we had been doing so far. We left there a little dazed, started listening to these raw tracks, and one of us said, ‘It sounds like mud.’ This name inspired further concepts, and the result of this session was the album Erozje (Erosion) – after all, mud is formed through soil erosion.

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Błoto - Bielice / Ziemie zdegradowane przez człowieka

Erozje was released in 2020 by Astigmatic Records. The album cover was designed by painter and rapper Michał Żytkowiak, known in the hip-hop scene as Żyto. The titles of all the tracks relate to the element of earth – the compositions include Bielice (Spodic Soils) and Czarnoziemy (Black Soils), as well as the poignant Ziemie Zdegradowane przez Człowieka (Land Degraded by Humans). This is how the band chose the conceptual direction it would follow in subsequent albums. Their instrumental music is accompanied by reflections on the state of the modern world and an attempt to capture the mood of the times; their albums address environmental degradation, climate change, and increasing social divisions. As Pędziwiatr says:

Our primary extramusical inspiration is nature, as well as discussions about it. We aim to use sounds to illustrate the direction in which the world around us is heading, including the negative aspects, such as the destructive impact of human activity on the planet and the fact that people can be destructive towards one another.

However, we try to avoid literalism and seek meanings with hidden depths, as in the case of the album Erozje, where the term can refer not only to geology but also to social phenomena. The concept helps us guide the mood of what will be created. I believe it also helps the audience because it adds layers of meaning to instrumental music. That is why, on subsequent albums – Kwiatostan (Inflorescence) and Grzybnia (Mycelium) – we knew in advance that we would be exploring plant and mycological themes, respectively, in our sonic pieces.

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Błoto, photo: Róża Sasor

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Later that year, the quartet released their second album, Kwiatostan. The material was recorded during the first lockdown in spring 2020 at the Jassmine Club in Warsaw. Compared to Erozje, it features more references to electronic music and spiritual jazz, as well as warmer and more soothing sounds.

Toni Sauna made a guest appearance on the track Hortensja (Hydrangea). Toni Sauna is the rap alias of Ohio-based producer Anthony Mills, who currently forms the duo Crack Rock with Pędziwiatr. The band’s keyboardist recalls the album as follows:

Each of Błoto’s albums carries with it a wealth of memories and experiences, but there is something about Kwiatostan that surprises me each time I return to it. Many intriguing elements are hidden within it. Dark and light forces clash on all our albums, but this one really does have a lot of hopeful sounds, and that’s the kind of joy I seek in music.

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Błoto live session w Jassmine

In 2021, the quartet released their third album, Kwasy i Zasady (Acids and Bases). The cover was once again designed by a well-known figure in the hip-hop scene – producer 1988, now known as 2k88. It is a session that the musicians recorded on a cassette tape recorder in the former rehearsal room of Tercet Egzotyczny. The lo-fi aesthetic (the first thing we hear on the recording is tape noise punctuated by a bass line) worked well with the mood of the music. This is the band’s darkest album and offers a perfect soundtrack to the atmosphere in Poland during the second year of the pandemic. This time, the focus of the sonic exploration was not on nature but rather on interpersonal relationships in today’s polarised world – captured in the chemical metaphor in the title – relationships that decay, become explosive, and turn caustic. The musicians contrast human vices, which are the subject of the first page of the album, with a set of principles expressed in titles such as Pokora (Humility), Prostota (Simplicity), Prawda (Truth), and Umiar (Temperance). Pędziwiatr said in an interview with Jazzpress at the time:

At present, I listen to a lot of Memphis rap from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Trap and drill originate there, and I am increasingly curious about how to translate the aggression and insolence of this music into jazz. This isn’t the only area I am exploring. I look for something infectious in music, something that can be ignorant and intrusive, even rude, in a way that pulls you in. New music has been extremely simplified to just a few sounds, but that is what makes it so captivating.

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Błoto - Prostactwo

In 2023, Grzybnia was released. In the promotional material for the album, the musicians referred to the metaphor of mycelium, mushroom spawn, as an intelligent network and a model of interspecies cooperation: ‘The complex, unstable contemporary world, which is falling apart into many pieces, needs the idea of mycelium, which copes very well in an environment degraded by humans and seemingly dead’.

In line with this concept, Błoto’s album is a true showcase of mushrooms. It starts with the calming, ambient Łysiczka (Psilocybe). Then comes ‘Kozak’ (Birch Bolete), which is probably the closest to the fusion of instrumental hip-hop and dark jazz that the band’s earlier albums are known for, or Muchomor (Fly Agaric) – pulsating and sombre, yet somewhat cartoonish in its exaggerated atmosphere. Szatan (Satan’s Bolete) is accompanied by a frenzied batucada, while Shiitake features a broken beat enriched with Oriental percussion instruments. As Pędziwiatr states:

I really enjoy this phase of working on an album, when we listen to music and give it meaning through a game of associations. Sometimes it looks fascinating, as in the case of working on Grzybnia, when we listened to the material, looked through a mushroom atlas, and named individual tracks.

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Błoto - Muchomor (Live at Paul's Boutique Record Store)

In turn, on the track Prawdziwek, they paid tribute to one of the greatest jazz mystics, Pharoah Sanders:

Prawdziwek (Penny Bun) is the only piece by Błoto that was outlined before the recording session. On the day Pharoah Sanders passed away, we were performing in Gdańsk. We were deeply saddened by the news and decided to open the concert with an improvisation that would express our feelings about the great figure leaving the jazz community. When recording material for Grzybnia, we decided to try to recreate it. We had a session at Piotr Zabrodzki’s Pasterka Studio, and when we finished playing, he – knowing that we were in a mushroom mood – shouted from the control room: ‘I’ve got the title, it’ll be “Prawdziwek”!’ This linked both to the prince of Polish mushrooms and to the character of Pharoah Sanders, who, as the Polish name of the mushroom suggests, was a genuine person.

Grzybnia was nominated for the Fryderyk 2025 award in the Alternative Music category. It did not receive the statuette, but the award went to another project involving Wrocław musicians – the album WAWA, created by Brodka and her guests for the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, for which Błoto recorded the song ‘Godzina W’ (W-Hour).

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Błoto, photo: Róża Sasor

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The fruitful session at Piotr Zabrodzki’s studio also resulted in the release of two singles on seven-inch vinyl records – Szlam / Ścieki (Sluge / Sewge) (2023) and Bakteria (Bacterium) (2024), which also features a remix of this track by American producer DāM-FunK. Additionally, there is the mini-album Grzyby (Mushrooms) (2024), which completes the mycological-forest diptych; its leitmotif is medicinal mushrooms and mould.

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Błoto - Szlam (Official Video)

The band’s publishing plans include a joint project recorded in Romania with Bucharest-based producer Ion D, founder of the Future Nuggets label – this time, the theme will be the element of air – and a recording of a session prepared in the studio of painter Sainer (Przemysław Blejzyk), the creator of the covers for Błoto’s last two albums.

The group’s driving force continues to be the recording sessions, which, as Pędziwiatr states, happen in interesting locations, sometimes by chance:

Błoto has evolved into a fully fledged, independent band with its own distinctive style of creation and expression. We stay true to collective improvisation – we meet in the studio without any pre-arranged material, but with our hearts and minds ready to cook up something special.

For me, Błoto is a vehicle for extracting the natural energy that emanates from music. When we play, I sometimes feel something special emerging from beneath our fingers, a kind of magical magma. Improvising together means we must let go of our individual egos. That’s why we see ourselves as a collective; there is no leader among us.

In the world of jazz, improvisation is linked with playing solos. For us, the most important thing is to compose through improvisation. Each of us recognises that we are preparing a dish together, and we aim to make it tasty. Therefore, it cannot be that everyone adds pepper or salt according to their own whims. I am surprised that this kind of approach can still work today, when we see people around us unable to get along in many areas, constantly adding pepper.

Discography:

Erozje (Astigmatic Records, 2020)
Kwiatostan (Astigmatic Records, 2020)
Kwasy i zasady (Astigmatic Records, 2021)
Grzybnia (Astigmatic Records, 2024)
Grzyby EP (Astigmatic Records, 2025)

Translated by: Agnieszka Mistur

21st century polish jazz

contemporary polish jazz musicians

hip-hop

improvisation