Today we’d like to introduce you to Robot Koch.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Robot. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I was born in Kassel in West Germany in 1977, musically I grew up on the soul tapes my mom was playing at home, lots of funk and motown stuff. As a teenager, I started playing drums in a death metal band, I was fascinated by the darkness, the sonic intensity and the technical skill this genre required. I went on to play more indie and jazz-infused stuff in bands. In the late 90s I got into DJ-ing via Hip Hop. From there, it was a short way to making my own beats and I started producing tracks. I had a really eclectic musical socialization, with influences from John Coltrane, Slayer, Moondog and Radiohead.
I moved to Berlin in 1999 and started playing shows with my band Jahcoozi shortly after. We made three albums and toured internationally until I left the band in 2008 and started my own project under my solo artist moniker Robot Koch. With my solo stuff, I saw support from both the BBC in the UK and also from Artists in LA. I made a mixtape for Flying Lotus` Brainfeeder Blog and played at Low End Theory in 2009, in the following years I kept coming back to the US to play shows at Lightning In A Botte, Shambala, Coachella, etc. What also started to happen is that my music was licensed for Film and TV. I had songs on Shows like the Blacklist, How to get away with murder, and Netflix Shows like Lucifer, You, etc. and also got placements in major Movie Trailers and Feature Films. I started running my own label, Trees and Cyborgs in 2016.
Apart from pursuing my artist career, I also signed to Sony as a writer and worked as a writer and producer for both indie and major artists worldwide, gaining gold and platinum records some of the songs I co-wrote and co-produced.
In 2013, I moved to LA after a long time in Berlin. It was a gut feeling decision and I trusted my intuition on this, it was time to move on and LA was a place where I didn’t know anyone but felt some kind of attraction and curiosity. I tapped into a great creative community here and really feel at home. But I’m still with one leg in Europe. I won the German Music Composers Award 2014 in the category “best composer electronic music” in 2014 and kept playing Festival Shows in Europe every year.
In 2018, I created an immersive Full Dome Live Show with 3D surround sound and 360 visuals, in cooperation with visual artist Mickael Le Goff. Our Immersive Live Show Sphere sold out in Planetariums and Festivals worldwide, winning several awards for “best immersive experience”.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Most artists will relate to this – it’s never a smooth road and the ups and downs are inevitable. Drawbacks are normal; it’s important to just stay at it. Which admittedly is sometimes easier said than done. It helps me to see the creative process as something that evolves naturally and it goes hand in hand with personal development. Growth is not about staying the same and that’s true for me both as an artist and a human being. So I learned to embrace the ever-changing flow to embody life’s creative process through my own creative act. Obstacles create friction which are needed to grow.
When I left Berlin I was not in a good place in my life. 2013 was a challenging year with lots of things coming to an end – relationship breakup, breakup with my management company at the time, a music project that went sour and so on. Life forced me out of my comfort zone and I took a leap of faith, moved to LA, a city in which I didn’t really know anyone and kinda started from scratch. But life can be rewarding if you leave your comfort zone and trust your intuition to venture out into unknown territory. In fact, I found that there is a lot of potential that you can tap into by widening your focus from the narrow comfort zone of the known to the limitless possibilities of the unknown. I tapped into a great creative community here in LA, and my music career kept growing and evolving into fields I didn’t imagine to be possible back in Berlin.
I also found that I can allow myself to go off grid and that this actually leads to more productivity and more balance in my life. I recently went to a Buddhist retreat center in the redwoods in northern California and this experience had a deep impact on both my personal and creative life. The same is true for places like Joshua tree, I’d just hide out in a cabin out there for a week and work on music or soak in the silence and I find myself so much more productive after such a time out, so it’s now actually part of my creative process to withdraw. Less input can mean more output. Ultimately it all comes from insides, so you gotta make space for it to manifest through you. And what I love about living in LA is that there are these places not too far from the city it where you really can disconnect to connect with yourself.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I’m a recording and performing artist/composer/producer.
I’m releasing my new album “the next billion years” this april, it`s a hybrid orchestral/electronic album which i recorded with grammy nominated conductor kristjan järvi and the nordic pulse orchestra in estonia last year.
My sound has been described as deep, cinematic and atmospheric, combining warm, emotional reflection with bass heavy futurism and forward-thinking production.
I love working both with organic and synthetic elements in my music, like using both electronics and orchestral elements and making them sound like they’re from one sound galaxy, rather than superimposing one over the other.
My music is very visual and lends itself to picture. So it has been used on numerous TV Shows, Movie Trailers, Feature Films and Ad campaigns over the last few years. I also run my own label, because especially with Sync Placements it’s great to own all your own rights to the music.
Apart from pursuing my artist career, I also work as a producer and composer for both indie and major artists worldwide, with some of my co-writes gaining gold and platinum records. He is also invited as a speaker at tech and music conferences.
I also work in the field of immersive experiences with my music. For my last album, I created an audiovisual immersive experience, custom made for planetariums and full dome venues with 360 visuals and surround sound.
Sphere sold out in Planetariums from Chicago to Moscow, from San Francisco to Berlin. It also won several awards, including “Best Immersive Experience” at Macon Film Festival and “Best Full Dome Film” at the DTLA Film Festival.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
What would I do differently if I could start over? In one word: nothing. There is so much growth potential in every obstacle and every opportunity. I just trust the process.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.treesandcyborgs.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robotkoch/?hl=de
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robotkochofficial/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/robotkoch
Image Credit:
Neil Kryszak and Siiri Kumari
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