#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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