Robot Koch

Los Angeles, USA

Albatross

DowntempoElectronic

Behind the Music

To me, music and art in general can be a form of activism. I always seek to collaborate with people to shed light and awareness on topics that need to be seen and heard. When Ian reached out to me about being a part of this project, my door was wide open. The Outlaw Ocean has an urgency and timeliness that resonates with me extremely. It sends an important message about the current state of humanity on this planet and where we’re going. In fact, this project is right up my alley, as I deal with a related theme in my work: the survival of our species on this planet, even in the distant future.

The idea of making a ‘soundtrack’ to a book is unusual and compelling at the same time. It is inspiring to work with information from not only Ian’s book, but also his field recordings and prose material on the subject. Being a supporter of organizations like Sea Shepherd and SeaLegacy myself, I am also happy that my music can help to further fund Ian’s reporting work.

Robot Koch
About Robot Koch

Robot Koch is an award winning artist, producer and composer from Berlin, currently living in Los Angeles. He has been steadily crafting a remarkably mature and original sound that expertly combines a deep, cinematic atmosphere, emotional reflection and forward thinking production.

Robot Koch has been presenting his music live over the last decade, appearing on the lineups of major festivals like Coachella, Sonar and Mutek. He has also played the Boiler Room several times.

Apart from pursuing his artist career, Koch can be found working as a producer and writer for both indie and major artists worldwide, gaining gold and platinum records for his productions.

For his album, “Sphere,” Koch expanded his musical horizon and created an immersive full dome live show with 3D surround sound and 360 visuals. He developed this project with visual artist Mickael Le Goff. “Sphere” sold out in planetariums and festivals worldwide, winning several awards for “best immersive experience.”

Koch won the “best composer electronic music” category at the 2014 German Music Composers Award. He also runs his own label, Trees and Cyborgs, which he founded in 2016.

Robot Koch´s music is an intriguing dialogue between technology and nature that seems particularly relevant to the times we live in. “It's like traveling through space, with all the beautiful and scary moments such a journey involves,” Koch said. It is this confluence of beauty and fear that grants his music a shamanic motif. The BBC’s Bobby Friction noted Koch’s music, “. . . sounds like artificial intelligence discovering religion.”

Winner of the 2021 Scripps Howard Award for Excellence in Innovation in Journalism

The Journalism behind the Music

All music in this project is based on The Outlaw Ocean, a New York Times Best-Selling book by Ian Urbina that chronicles lawlessness at sea around the world. This reporting touches on a diversity of abuses ranging from illegal and overfishing, arms trafficking at sea, human slavery, gun running, intentional dumping, murder of stowaways, thievery of ships and other topics.

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