The Lab needs your Help!

The Lab needs your Help!

Dear friends, we could use some help here.
Sven and I have just launched our Patreon page of The Lab. https://www.patreon.com/the_lab

We have a playground here for true creativity. Improvised music is the game. With every bar and note we play, we follow the universal musical approach of Peter Erskine who said: “Don’t play what you know, play what you don’t know.”

Anyway this is far from mainstream and will never enter the charts or pay for itself by royalties from streaming. But this is what we want to do, because it is life, love, music and art all in one place.

Please support our work by sharing, donating, pledging. A little bit from YOU can help US, so WE can go on and be creative and create music far from the mainstream.

Spread the word and let’s see where we will land.
THANK YOU!

https://www.patreon.com/the_lab

The NOTOPIA Remix Contest

The NOTOPIA Remix Contest

We are happy to announce the NOTPIA “Celebrate” Remix Contest!

On our BandCamp site you will find a free download the raw isolated recordings of every instrument on the song “Celebrate” of our album “Celebrating Life“. No EQ, no compressor was added. No effects or even panning. Please play around with them, rearrange them, mix them, cut them, put them in a different context. In short, please play around with these files and send your results to marc@mennigmann.com.

For those of you who are wondering if the download is really free: “Yes it is.” Just click the “Buy digital album link” and enter a zero as price. You of course can pay something for it, if you want to support our music, but we are giving these files away for free.

The best three remixes will be released as a free download EP on our BandCamp site, of course mentioning your name as the one who created the remix.

Deadline for sending in your remix is June 30, 2018. We hope you enjoy this project. Love is the answer.

NOTOPIA Video Release

NOTOPIA Video Release

During the sessions of the “Celebrating Life” album, we had Robert Vater joining us to film the process of creating something from nothing. Here is a video, that shows how something evolved from the void. The track was released as “Inspire” on the album. You can see the whole gang in action, working on every note, building this up to a great feature of Mike Keneally’s guitar playing. Enjoy…

The album “Celebrating Life” is available at Bandcamp, by the way. Just saying…

Fifty Shades Of White, a new NOTOPIA release

Fifty Shades Of White, a new NOTOPIA release

Today I released another NOTOPIA album. It’s called “Fifty Shades Of White” and contains about half an hour of trio madness. From the album description:

What would you get if you put a Chameleon, a particle collider and a cheese cake into a rehearsal room? Well, we don’t know either, but it’s almost as unpredictable as recording a NOTOPIA session.
This new 26 minutes EP called “Fifty Shades Of White” covers six tracks, which can not be more unpredictable. This is progressive free jazz with a spice of dark ambient Real Book phobia. Dive in and enjoy!

“Fifty Shades Of White” is available on BandCamp or iTunes. And of course it’s a free release for my BandCamp subscribers!

NOTOPIA “Celebrating Life” CD Release

NOTOPIA “Celebrating Life” CD Release

Dear friends, this is a wonderful moment, and I would love to share the story behind it:
In June 2016 I had some studio time with my friends Sven Kosakowski and Peter Alexius. We recorded some free improvised music with crazy guitar god Mike Keneally and the bassist of his trio, Jaan Wessman.
It was a wonderful session with a lot of very nice output, and it took us about 6 months to select the most beautiful moments. Then we started mixing and editing the raw tracks – but we did not add anything new. The rule was “no overdubs”. But, we broke our rule to bring this to another level. Some of the tracks were sent to prog legend Peter Hammill and vocalist Mimi Ventura for some vocal additions. What came back from them blew us away, and we were happy to add their lyrics to our improvisations. Another run of mixing and finally mastering was done and now, after more than a year in the making, the final CDs arrived.
This is a lot different to the SAM sessions we had with Julie Slick in 2014 as I was much more involved in the production process. I did the complete mix down and half of the mastering by myself. I even laid out the track order and track names to make this a concept record. And finally I also did the cover photography and the whole artwork. So this is very much my baby.
I learned so much on the way and I am thankful for the help and advise I got from so may people. And I want to say thank you to my friends Sven and Peter for their trust in my work and giving me so much creative room to play with my own ideas.
The resulting record NOTOPIA “Celebrating Life” is already available for preorder. It will be released this Friday, Nov. 17. We are going to have a virtual release party online, and you are of course invited to join us at https://www.facebook.com/events/505752703126230??ti=ia

The album is available as a CD or as digital download on BandCamp at
https://mennigmann.bandcamp.com/album/celebrating-life 

I hope to see you Friday to celebrate this release.

Thanks for reading.

All my best,
Marc

NOTOPIA – A Week About Friendship And Music

NOTOPIA – A Week About Friendship And Music

So here we go!
The next week will be about friendship and music. I have a two days studio session with my two NOTOPIA pals Peter Alexius on guitar and Sven Kosakowski on drums. Our very special guests will be our friends Mike Keneally on guitar and Jaan Wessman on bass. Virtually with us will be Divinity Roxx, who is joining us in form of a vocal phrase sampler I built with her in the last weeks.
I simply don’t know what will happen during these studio sessions, as there are no tunes to play, no prepared lead sheets, scores or chords. We will talk with our instruments, have a conversation through the music that will happen. And we will have a really good time. As I said, this is about friendship and music…