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.”