Błoto

The most alternative act on the Polish jazz scene started out as a band formed out of sheer boredom, with no plan in mind. But that’s what imaginations are for, right? To make music “as filthy as mud,” and push the idea as far as it’ll go. Błoto (which the band translates as “The Mire”) creatively draws on jazz traditions, blending them with strong hip-hop and electronic influences. It also takes inspiration from nature and the musicians’ observations of nature, which weave and wend through every album and recording released by the Wrocław-based quartet, itself an offshoot of the acclaimed jazz ensemble EABS. When they dropped their 2020 debut Erozje, it was dubbed a radical soundtrack for an era of hate speech and a dying planet. Five years later, when their fifth LP Grzyby came out, the worldview expressed in their music hadn’t changed, but it offered more ideas for how to stem the swelling tide of egoism and nationalism. Instead of building more walls, why not listen to Błoto and come together amid the mire we’ve ended up in? August 7–9 at the OFF Festival, for example.