Robot Koch

Robert Koch, the Berlin native who records as Robot Koch, moves fluidly between propulsive club tracks and sweeping cinematic compositions. After issuing his first solo full-length, Death Star Droid, in 2009, his initial output gravitated toward left-field hip-hop and moody, glitch-inflected dubstep rather than maximalist forms. With the arrival of Hypermoment in 2015, however, he had expanded his palette into a wider sonic territory while preserving a luminous, understated production aesthetic. Later projects further integrated ambient and contemporary classical textures, notably 2020’s The Next Billion Years, which included orchestral scoring by the Nordic Pulse Ensemble under conductor Kristjan Järvi. Koch also issues ambient work under the Foam and Sand moniker, among them a self-titled 2023 album, and has collaborated with pianist Julien Marchal on releases including the EP Movements.

Born in 1977, Koch studied several instruments during childhood, beginning piano at age six and drums at thirteen. These early interests took shape professionally when he joined the glitchy electropop trio Jahcoozi in the mid-2000s, where he handled beat construction. He also recorded an album with the abstract hip-hop duo the Tape vs. RQM and pursued numerous other projects before launching material as Robot Koch toward the end of the decade, among them the electro-house single “Lies”/“Fever” with Elle P and the hip-hop EP Upside Down with Cerebral Vortex. His debut solo album, Death Star Droid, appeared on Project: Mooncircle in 2009 and was swiftly followed by Songs for Trees and Cyborgs in 2010, which featured contributions from Boxcutter, Doshy, and Graciela Maria. The growing visibility of his solo work led him to leave Jahcoozi and relocate to Los Angeles; his third Project: Mooncircle album, 2011’s The Other Side, reflected the emotional adjustment to that relocation.

Over the ensuing years he refined a more cinematic approach that earned him the German Music Composers Awards prize for Best Composer Electronic Music. Hypermoment, his fourth studio album, surfaced in 2015 on Modeselektor’s Monkeytown imprint. The following year he established his own label, Trees & Cyborgs, which became the outlet for a series of releases including 2016’s Particle Fields with violinist and composer Savannah Jo Lack. Sphere, his 2018 album, originated as the soundtrack for an audiovisual installation created with Mickael le Goff. His sixth studio album, the orchestral The Next Billion Years, arrived in 2020 via Modern Recordings.

Koch initiated the ambient project Foam and Sand in 2020 and issued a reworked version of The Next Billion Years that received an immersive premiere in partnership with audio company L-Acoustics. He has additionally contributed music to the Monroe Institute’s meditation app. Foam and Sand followed with the full-length Full Circle in 2021 and expanded the series of “Circle” works through the Nettwerk-released self-titled 2023 album, which includes appearances by Priscilla Ahn and TWO LANES. Robot Koch and pianist Julien Marchal also released the EP Movements in 2023.