GLASTONBURY 2025

BRAND NEW SUNFLOWER SOUNDSYSTEM

We are delighted to announce a landmark collaboration between Magical Mushroom Company®, Silver Hayes, and Floating Points for the first large-scale use of mycelium-based acoustic design in a live music environment.

As Glastonbury's original dance arena, Silver Hayes is known for pushing the boundaries of sound and sustainability. This year, in partnership with UK electronic artist- Floating Points, the team unveiled the brand-new Sunflower Sound System.

This consists of six colossal new speaker stacks inspired by some of the finest sound environments from around the world. Nestled within this new system are 25 giant mycelium and hemp acoustic discs, each two metres wide and designed to absorb sound just like mushrooms absorb moisture.

The innovative structures reduce unwanted reflections and reverberations, improving acoustic clarity and letting the music shine at its clearest and cleanest. Inspired by the brilliant Samuel Fitzgerald Kay, whose Masters research at NMITE conducted with MMC, unlocked the acoustic potential of MMC's mycelium-based Mushroom® Packaging materials. With further testing at the Salford Acoustic Laboratory, results confirmed that mycelium composites can match the acoustic performance of traditional materials, without the environmental cost.

The project was led by Paul Gilligan, Ryan Little, Chris Marshall and Denny Moyers at MMC along with Simon Carrol from re-right design. The Mushroom® Packaging segments were crafted with love by Ian Chan and his team at Mushroom 2 Attenborough, alongside the amazing carpentry and tooling agents of Andy Booth and Patrick Molyneux at ASM Tech Ltd.

This is the beginning of a new direction for Magical Mushroom Company® in acoustic design and live performance settings- being the first large-scale use of mycelium technology in live entertainment acoustics.

As our founder and CEO Paul Gilligan says: "By reimagining the structure of sound itself through regenerative design, we're proving that performance and sustainability can coexist without compromise."

The future of sound is sustainable. The future of packaging, and now acoustics, is grown, not made.