The Latest Release: THE NEXT BILLION YEARS (FOAM AND SAND REWORKS)

With “The Next Billion Years (Foam and Sand Reworks)” Koch revisits his latest album through the newfound ambient lense of “Foam and Sand”. The new album therefore entirely consists of reworks and re-imaginations of tracks from the preceding album, nevertheless, it is not just old music made new. “Foam and Sand” has its very own unique and signature style. Creating a more intimate sound as a contrast to the large orchestral arrangements of “The Next Billion Years” the “Foam and Sand Reworks” are minimal, focused, and based on purely essential sounds.
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Foto Credit: Siiri Kumari
Additional Info
The Next Billion Years is an album which was released on May 29, 2020, at its core, asks what the future might look like, and it was Cousteau’s own predictions on that tape which ignited such a question in Robot, “When I first heard the recording I was really blown away by its long term vision. When we think about the future we usually think about our own lifetime or the one of our children, but who really thinks a thousand or a million years into the future? Or even better, a billion years?” asks Robot.
But different from Cousteau’s verbal meanderings, Robot’s exploration is sonic, “That’s what’s beautiful about music, you express yourself with so much more depth than you ever could with words. It’s beyond the conscious mind, it touches you deeper. You don’t need to understand it, you just feel it,” he says.Having always had a cinematic approach to music-making meant that Robot also felt that the album called for a visual element. Following their successful collaboration on Sphere, Robot paired with artist Le Goff again for The Next Billion Years, “My work is always very visual, I create music like soundtracks to imaginary movies in my head or to moments and feelings that I can almost see as a picture,” says Robot. That intensely visual approach to music also united Robot and Järvi’s creative process, “Kristjan works very intuitively and gives his ensemble images to work with, such as ‘imagine you’re walking in honey’,” explains Robot “Comparisons like that makes the musicians feel a certain way when playing. It’s all about the feeling, not just about playing the right notes from the music sheet, but to really connect emotionally with the music.”
Robot Koch is an award winning artist/producer/composer from Berlin, living in Los Angeles. He has been steadily crafting a remarkably mature and original sound that expertly combines a deep and cinematic atmosphere, emotional reflection and forward thinking production. His visual music lends itself to picture and has been used on numerous TV Shows, Movie Trailers, Feature Films and Ad campaigns over the last few years. Robot Koch has been presenting his music live over the last decade, attracting a growing audience worldwide.
For his album Sphere Koch expanded his musical horizon even more and created an immersive Full Dome Live Show with 3D surround sound and 360 visuals, which he developed in cooperation with visual artist Mickael Le Goff. Sphere sold out in Planetariums and Festivals worldwide, winning several awards for “best immersive experience”. Koch, who also won the German Music Composers Award 2014 in the category ‘best composer electronic music“ runs his own label, Trees and Cyborgs, which he founded in 2016. Robot Koch´s music is an intriguing dialogue between technology and nature that seems particularly relevant to the times we live in. It´s a constantly evolving exploration of that what lies beyond.
It is this confluence of beauty and fear that likewise grants his music a shamanic motif, as the BBC’s Bobby Friction noted on Koch’s music; “it sounds like artificial intelligence discovering religion.”