#17 / 24 Robot Koch

#17.1 Foam and Sand, ambient soundscape and visual project

Robot Koch is an award-winning artist and composer living between Berlin and Los

Angeles. He has been steadily crafting an original sound that expertly combines cinematic

atmospheres that inspire emotional reflection to forward-thinking production. Koch has been

involved in several conceptual projects that combine music and visuals with themes that

range from philosophy to futurism. His audiovisual project Sphere, created with artist Mickael

Le Goff, sold out in planetariums and full-dome venues from Berlin to San Francisco and

won the award for “best immersive experience” at Macon Film Festival and DTL Film

Festival and made into a daily show at Fantasy Dome Las Vegas.

Koch’s music fuses elements of classical tradition to cutting-edge technologies. He has

collaborated with the conductor Kristjan Järvi and the Nordic Pulse Orchestra as well as

remixing the likes Max Richter and Christian Löffler and playing concerts at Coachella,

Mutek, Sonar Festival and Boiler Room. Due to the immersive and cinematic qualities of his

sound, Koch has also been commissioned to compose for numerous TV Shows and Feature

films over the years. In 2014, Koch won “best electronic music composer” in the German

Music Composers Award.

Foam and Sand is the ambient soundscape and visual project of award-winning

composer and conceptual artist, Robot Koch. Inspired by the composer’s daily habit of

meditation, ideas for the project started to take shape during the lockdown of 2020, growing

organically under the radar until Foam and Sand was officially announced in 2021. Using

tape recordings of slowed-down pianos, modular synths, and other sonic sources, Foam and

Sand is a collection of 16 warm and organic ambient tracks. The signature sound is created

with loops that magnify the irregularities and imperfections of cassette recordings and that

are then shaped by the artist into hazy meditative journeys. Through the process, the grainy

subtleties of sound give way to vast and lush atmospheric soundscapes, making audible the

complex interplay of micro and macro and highlighting the interconnectedness of these two

spheres in life.

“I started meditating 7 years ago. It’s interesting that meditation and medicine have the same

root syllable. Meditating before working on my music resets my brain and helps me access

ideas that are layers deeper than my conscious mind. Foam and Sand started as a selfsoothing

project which I now share with the intention of providing healing and inspiration to

others.” – Robot Koch

With recent support from Dummy Mag, KEXP, Echoes, ByteFM, KCRW and NTS, Foam and

Sand has a growing audience of listeners worldwide who appreciate music that incorporates

hints of nostalgia and futurism in a holistic sound design approach. Foam and Sand album

will be launched August 13th on Trees and Cyborgs, both on a limited edition vinyl and

digitally.

https://www.robotsdontsleep.com/

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