OUT OF FASHION

BIONI
SAMP

LONDON, ENGLAND

Musicians have been mining inspiration from the natural world for centuries, though few have achieved a symbiosis between artist and muse as elegantly as the beekeeper DJ, Bioni Samp. His chosen instrument – the Hive Synthesizer – harnesses the sounds of his beloved insects.

Bioni’s interest in beekeeping began decades ago, but the rapid decline of pollinator populations over the last 50 years has driven him to bring attention to the issue by creating music made exclusively from the sounds of bees. Honey frames are fashioned into microphone rigs, while Samp also conducts and records electrical signals through containers of honey. Once captured, Bioni uses software and his own homemade synthesizers to isolate frequencies and manipulate the bees’ sounds into trance-like compositions.

Bioni employs a mad scientist’s array of homespun audio hardware to record sounds within the hive itself.

Bioni wears style no. 875

Inspired by punk music’s spartan three chord ethos, Samp’s songs are deceptively simple, centering around three tones that reflect the three types of bees in every hive: the queen, the workers, and the drones. The result is an electro-organic expression of the sounds of nature. Like bees, who communicate with each other via a complex pattern of dance steps, Bioni wants his music to encourage people to have empathy for the natural world, and to understand its importance in our day to day lives.

Bioni hopes that if people become interested in bees through the sounds of his music, they will also become interested in saving the bees.

At the root of Bioni’s mission is the fact that our planet and the pollinator ecosystem are anything but disposable. As befits a man who spends his days (on and off-stage) encased in a vintage bee suit, when it comes to style, Bioni takes a utilitarian and timeless approach to what he wears. Similarly, our moc toes were designed to outlast the constant barrage of trends, to get better with age, and to truly last a lifetime.