REVIEW: ROBOT KOCH & SAVANNAH JO LACK – PARTICLE FIELDS

Described as ‘wonderful and strange, the pop music of the future’ by the late, and great John Peel, Robert Koch’s been knocking around for awhile now. Best known by the stage name Robot Koch, he’s a German, Los Angeles based, record producer. Koch first found recognition as a member of the band Jahcoozi, before establishing himself as a solo artist.

Now he’s returned with his spaced out collaboration with Australian violinist/vocalist Savannah Jo Lack (who’s stripped down body of work, has strong resemblances to an early P.J Harvey), having just released a new hyper minimal LP. It leans towards the more cinematic, low-fi & ambient genre of the masters of composition – Nils Frahm and Jon Hopkins.

Moving on from 2015`s Hypermoment’ release on Modeselektor`s Monkeytown label, Robot Koch returns with a special collaboration album. Particle Fields features Koch´s detailed and organic sound experiments as well as the emotive string arrangements of Lack giving the album both a sense of dramatic depth and a contemporary production that is complimented by stunning visuals. Koch and Lack wrote the songs together from scratch, instead of superimposing string arrangements over existing electronic compositions, they let both melodic styles grow together organically to beautiful effects. The album embraces the stark and rich expressive qualities of both the classical and electronic music worlds, mashing them up to create a new lonesome landscape for the digital age… that is both imaginative and visceral in output, and also nods to Shakespeares sonnets in it’s storytelling aesthetic language.

Robot Koch and Savannah Jo Lack – The Dream (Short Film by Javiera Estrada)