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binnie mf:

i grew up in New Jersey in a fairly musical family. as a child I mostly listened to jazz and rock, with some Hip Hop influences such as in Sublime and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. growing up in NJ, i heard my fair share of biggie and tupac as well, but definitely more biggie. it wasn't until i heard rap combined with jazz as performed by artists such as Chance the Rapper, Tyler the Creator that i really began to understand how exciting the world of music was. i listened voraciously--mostly favoring jazzy Hip Hop, breakcore and emo stuff. senior year of highschool i started writing my raps, and my beats were inspired by the punk ethos of play what you can, i used a toy piano and audacity to create a deeply unorthodox & fairly unlistenable release when i was in highschool. 

since then, i've studied and experimented with a number of different electronic instruments and a large variety of software which i would implementin my beatmaking, ranging from dj software to a eurorack simulator to oldschool trackers. i have a huge love weird & corny music that's emotionally honest... i can say as a sentimental weirdo myself, it's given me solace, and the catalyst for my project Of Reverence was because i wanted to be able to do that for someone else.

"unknown sounds" is intended as a radio archive of experimental artists’ interior worlds, these that are externalized through their work, and the interchange through artist communities. This is an contemporary archive of experimental art-making in communities around the world, the inherent politicism of art, and the social change this may or may not represent. In short, it is intended mostly as a look into these small worlds, with the idea of generating more thought on both human fallibility and potential, and how art can engender hope. Each section here is meant as a studio visit, but also a glimpse into the doings of a wider community and the cultural, political repercussions of experimental sound and art-making.

"unknown sounds" is produced by Elena Botts and organized by the unknown sound collective, an experimental international multimedia collective.

Elena Botts has lived many places in the northeast and abroad. Elena's poems and writings have been published in over a hundred literary and scholarly magazines. Elena has been the winner of four poetry contests and has had many books published. Elena's visual artwork has won numerous awards and has been exhibited in various galleries. Elena has collaborated on, released, and installed sound and moving image artwork, as well as multimedia and conceptual art, and has organized a multimedia collective for this purpose, while pursuing graduate school and academic, policy, and activist work and projects.