Description

1LP Vinyl – AR013LP

Polish quartet Bloto (The Mire) is a side project by musicians from the country's larger jazz meets hip hop collective EABS, and Erozje is the group's debut album. In English, the title means erosion—erosion of the earth but also of erosion of civil liberties, free speech, evidence-based policy making and consensual policing. Western Europe and the US are in the 2010/20s experiencing this erosion for the first time in around sixty years. In Poland and Eastern Europe it is more familiar.

All this comes through in the music, in which the electric keyboards and synths of Marek Pedziwiatr figure large. The album was recorded on a last minute impulse in a studio near Gdansk on a rest day during EABS' summer 2018 tour. It is an in-the-moment affair with motifs rather than tunes and only the most basic head arrangements. It is a vibe familiar to jazz audiences in Britain and the US, but apparently a new phenomenon on the Polish scene, where Erozje is creating something of a storm.