Artist Biography: Koan
Producing sophisticated psychedelic Chill Out music is a discipline within the electronic music scene that is similar to playing Jazz in a certain respect: It needs maturity and extensive musical experience to go beyond the scope of standards, to become really good and extraordinary. This might have to do with the fact that this kind of music is not aiming a busy dance floor, rising its hands and shouting out loud during the breaks. Instead of that, it is made for the individual mind and therefore includes a less functional but pretty intellectual, mature and also very artistic moment. Seen in front of this background, the history of Koan gives some interesting hints about the astonishing musical quality of this Russian duo.
It were the early nineties with their wild and excessive Techno parties, still exotic like from another world back then, that brought Daniel Roeth to the scene: As a passionate DJ he experienced electronically generated Trance in the underground clubs of Moscow. Discovering the fascinating creative possibilities of tracker programs, first forms of software based audio sequencers, some time later, made him neglecting the turntables more and more often to dive deeper and deeper into his very own universe of sounds instead of. In this situation it was only a question of time until he met William Grey, who was an essential part of the tracker scene in those days, programming his own modules for Atari, C64 and PC computers. Joining their creative energies in a mutual studio in 1993 brought to live even three projects: Vacuum Stalkes follows the idea of “Digital Dance Sampledelica”, which is Progressive in the original meaning of the term, Fatum Sci-Fi is a project dedicating abstract noise experiments, IDM and Minimal and finally the Chill Out project Koan became the most popular of these three. Beside these activities, Daniel Roeth is also busy with composing music for video games and Russian documentary films.
Sixteen years of constant evolution, of trying and testing different hardware and software and exhausting their possibilities have formed a sound that is outstanding concerning its ideas and arrangements as well as its production quality. So Koan today represents top-notch Chill Out music that seeps into the listener’s mind with touching harmonies and a mind bending brilliance. Beside its high musical activity within Russia, the duo has also chilled numerous international Trance festivals around the globe.