When you are Robot Koch, living, breathing and hearing music is an understatement. He likens creating new music to giving birth. Says the German-bred, Los Angeles-based electronic music producer, “You nurture your ideas for a whole while and hatch them until it is time to let them go into the world and from that point on its not just “your” music anymore. It becomes part of people’s lives and ideally is the soundtrack to their experiences and inspires them. So yes, you do want it to do well, be heard and find its way to the listeners, but it is not in your hands anymore, which is somehow both scary and beautiful.”
Koch is undertaking that experience right now, after releasing his new album Hypermoment on November 25. He is now heading to India on a three-city tour to promote the album, including a stop at Bengaluru. This is the producer’s second trip to India, and it’s certainly unlike the last one, when he played at the super-exclusive Magnetic Fields Festival in Rajasthan as well as in a five-star hotel’s club in Chennai.
With three club shows in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, Koch actually says he prefers festivals over clubs. He explains, “You meet a lot of other artistes, you get to see other shows and it is a very mixed crowd. A club show can be more black or white, either people show up to your show and it’s a banging night, or it’s not that busy. You never know. I hope for the best though.”
His Indian connection extended beyond the string of shows last year, though. Koch collaborated with Delhi-based Abhishek Bhatia aka Curtain Blue on Hypermoment , and says he’s open to more Indian collaborators as well.
“I’m open and curious. I find the best people to work with when I’m not looking for them.” Apart from that, Hypermoment also features his new role as a vocalist, something that he felt he could do when he made “a great leap of faith” and moved to Los Angeles after 13 years in Berlin. He calls the move empowering, adding, “It turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life so far. It gave more faith, both in life and in me as an artiste. I was only going to sketch this vocal idea and was going to have it replaced by a “real” vocalist at some point. But when I replayed the song days later, I had to accept: it has everything it needs. It is perfect in its imperfection.”
The move definitely influenced Hypermoment , and Koch was singing about these same things, as well as relationships and culture clashes. He adds, “It is more implicit than explicit. I carry subjects like that in the mood and emotionality of a piece, not so much in the lyrics only.”
But after spending all that intensity on music and lyrics and sending it out to the world, Koch does know how to kick back and unwind. A fan of the great outdoors, Koch has planned his R&R before his gigs. “Yes I do love nature and I won’t travel for that long to just play back-to-back shows and then fly out again. Time doesn’t always permit that, but this time I’ll come a few days earlier and will treat myself with a nature retreat on a secluded beach in Goa.” Catch Robert Koch at The Humming Tree on November 27.
