A forest is not a collection of trees.
Underneath, a fungal network links them. It trades nutrients for sugar. It carries signals between trees that would not survive on their own. It feeds seedlings that sit in the shade. The fungus cannot photosynthesise. The tree cannot reach that far. Neither side is in charge. The form that works is symbiosis, and it is slow.
(Scientists are still arguing about how much of this is really a "wood wide web" and how much is a nice story. I am fine with that. The image is still the best one I have found for what I want to say.)
Why This Record
[[Symbiosis]] was about looking up from the phone. Mycelium is about what happens after that. You are still surrounded by systems that learn, generate and answer. The loud options are the obvious ones: reject them completely, or hand everything over. Both feel like the wrong shape to me.
Mycelium suggests a third one. Stay rooted. Keep your own metabolism. Exchange what you cannot make yourself, and give back what the other side cannot. Do not let the network become the tree.
It is also a way to make decisions, which I needed more than I expected this year. When something new arrives, ask whether it behaves like mycelium or like a parasite. Does it connect, or does it extract? Does it leave the soil richer? Does it move at a speed the roots can follow? Most of the noise disappears once you ask those questions. Most of what I [[deleted last year]] failed all three.
The Six Pieces
These were made slowly, at night, with machines that hum and rooms that breathe. Field recordings next to synthetic environments, like on Symbiosis, but this time the two textures grow into each other instead of sitting side by side.
Loam is the soft ground everything starts in.
Canopy is the light that reaches the floor.
Hyphae are the single threads before they become a network.
Waiting for Something is the playful one. It has a little more groove in it, but only towards the end, and something sweet and friendly that I think we need in the middle of all this. Have fun with the technology. Keep it in balance. Then let it in.
Root Access is the moment the system realises who had the highest privileges all along.
Mycelium is the network itself. Older than any of ours, and still running.
82 minutes in total. No BPM to worry about. Put it on, [[let your mind wander]], and let it run.
Where To Get It
Mycelium is out now on Bandcamp and here on mordio.online. If you want it on streaming, it will show up there whenever it shows up. I stopped planning my releases around that.
You came here, not to an algorithm, so you get the whole thing right here. Press play. If it speaks to you, get it on Bandcamp or in the shop.
And if you want to follow what I do, do it [[here, on mordio.online]], not through a feed. That is the whole point.
MORDIO