What a privilege it is for me as a musician to be able to reflect upon the everyday madness!
Many things we have taken for granted are imploding. It is this possibility to accompany these moments of contemporary history with our songs, our music and lyrics, which constitutes exactly this privilege. Starting work on a new album is always an effort on my part.

This is what it was like after Out of key… with the time, People, People in Room N°. 8 and also after the SoulMates album.
Deep down I have always felt that our albums reflect an artistic episode within myself that cannot be outperformed. Accordingly, these albums were created in the course of long processes, lasting five to six years spent writing, discarding, retaking.

Artistic reflection of world events is always a fragile mix between facts and fiction, sense and sensuality, passion and suffering. As artists we always have to deal with our agony, but can we preserve the perfect idealism, free from daily constraints and commitments, that music taught us in our teenage days, and as adults merge it with a hopefully somewhat wiser perspective?

Haven't we gone through diverse agonizing battles of our lives? Did these battles really serve the purpose of teaching us that their value lies in fighting them in the name of our dreams? Haven't we lost enough battles for our dreams?
And still, haven't we won, or at least intended to win, the battle for the better cause? Haven't we fought too hard for what we thought was right, also the right music? Have we been as considerate and sensitive as we expected others to be?
In retrospect, tackling this album as always, with the comfort of the well-known, would have definitely been the easiest way with the least possible inner resistance.

But somehow, because a lot of things have accumulated, I was suffering from a kind of writer's block.
Until, one day, this was dissolved by a key moment: we were playing a long and complex concert in Dresden with the legendary Supertramp mastermind Roger Hodgson and several significant artists from Russia, China, India, Brazil and South Africa. This concert challenged us, and at the same time gave us enormous pleasure and energy. Later, after an unusual number of encores, I had a profound conversation with a very dear friend. We were sitting on stage, with the instruments being dismantled around us, and delved deeply into our souls.

At around 5 a.m. we arrived at our hotels, and at 7.10 a.m. my plane left Dresden for the next concert, which was in Salzburg. The first song, After the Flood, was born in these one and a half hours – written down on hotel stationery. This moment unraveled the knot, and suddenly I could again feel within myself this quest for the purpose of making music in uncomfortable, dangerous ways, full of inner conflict, which I think are the only right ways, fragile, overly emotional, passionate, but really and consistently „hand-made“. This time, again, I have of course discarded a lot of what I've composed, except for what can be heard on this album and what has stood all the tests. I could feel what an honor it is to be able to record these songs with my friends. For this we retrieved our studio's analog machine, which we hadn't switched on for years. Preceded by an incredibly ludicrous flight coordination, we found ourselves once more at my place by the lake, doing what we love doing most.

Far away from formats, taste, the spirit of the times, fashion and commercial constraints, we made the music we carry in our hearts, which we think is the only true music: with radical intensity, emotional, sensual but masculine, passionate with the full ambivalence of the life of a musician at the „Café Eclectica“.

But the real trial is still ahead, when people hold this CD in their hands and we just say „Let the Music make the Talking“.
And our mission is accomplished if we are able to pass on a fraction of the joy we felt writing and working together in recording sessions. If this happens, we have together found the true meaning of making music. And maybe, with the idealism of the 70s, we have been able to formulate answers to some questions, asked or unasked. One time, it was 2002 in Berlin, when we played one of our numerous concerts with the line-up Al Di Meola, Bill Evans, Randy Brecker, Ian Anderson, Chris Thompson, the Sturcz Quartet, Laszlo and me, a music editor announced us with the following words:

„Today's meaningless pop music often sounds like a declaration of love via text message. The music of the ManDoki SoulMates sounds like a love letter written with a fountain pen.“ She may have felt that way, it may even have been true at the time, today's listening habits, however, are certainly different. Seven years have passed since then, and countless bands worldwide are using the breakdown of the music industry, which hasn't survived the paradigm shift and therefore no longer floods us with ready-made, meaningless formats. Therefore, the spirit of individuality in form and content has become much more audible.

Thus we are not so much „Out of Key with the Time“, and we did what musicians can do. Just like the baker baking bread, the doctor trying his best to heal, journalists casting light where darkness prevails, we tried to hand over an analog recording, unreworked, in all purist clarity, which we hope will sound like a hand-written declaration of love to the radically intensive joy of being, the natural love of making music, the love of life!

Leslie Mandoki has just come back from Shanghai. The musical allrounder from Lake Starnberg has just completed a true concert marathon in the so-called „Middle Kingdom“.
Seven years ago, this would have been unthinkable.
Seven years ago, the world was entirely different.
Seven years ago, the last album of ManDoki's SoulMates series was released.

Finally, the follow-up album is here: ManDoki SoulMates AQUARELLE Everything was almost like it used to be back then: legendary rock and jazz icons get together in Leslie Mandoki's home in Tutzing to live and cook together, to have long discussions – a lively community of musicians. And to go to the studio afterwards to play some music together. Brothers in spirit – simply soulmates – don't abide by limits or time. The songs are characterized by the creative spirit of the 70s, the quest for musical individuality.

Since their first conjoint album Out Of The Key… With The Time” what at first felt like a „Who-Is-Who of Rock and Jazz” multi-artist project has grown together more and more to form a „real band“. It is remarkable how all these different „alpha animals“ and „bandleaders” are again and again willing to unite and form a band under the direction of Leslie Mandoki – and simply have a great time playing together.

Numerous live performances (albeit in different formations) can testify to this fact! Everything is almost like back then. But only just almost. The world has changed. The United States of America now have an African-American president. Germany has a female chancellor. Too much greed and credulity have brought about an economic crisis. These things concern all of us, and of course also the Soul Mates, who live all over the globe. No wonder that the songs have also changed. They are more puristic, more radical, jazzier and edgier. They hold on to all that is good, to confidence, to everything that counts: faith and honesty.

The last SoulMates album, released in 2002, had already ushered in a renaissance of authentic, handmade music at a time when artificial plastic pop dominated the market. AQUARELLE continues this development. The world's best musicians show their mastery. Without any compromises to the so-called market. Or the so-called radio format. The song „Aquarelle“, including extensive jazz solo parts, lasts a „mere“ 14 minutes and 45 seconds; but „Haunted“, „Faster“ and „Café Eclectica“ aren't much shorter.

Compromises?
We're talking about Bobby Kimball, Eric Burdon, Steve Lukather, Al Di Meola, Randy Brecker and Till Brönner! We're talking about pureness, not computers and digital data files. The demigods of recent music history gathered in Mandoki's studios at the shores of Lake Starnberg in Tutzing to record AQUARELLE. Dark, heavy oakwood floors, the patina of music history. Setting up the mics, firing up the tape recorder, Mandoki starts counting: One, two, three, four. Let's go! You can feel the „magic moment”...

The finest technology, the most advanced microphones and tape recorders now let everybody hear the magic. All of this is unique, but not enough. The songs are at the heart of everything. They tell stories about life.
The last few years have been radically intense for Leslie Mandoki. His studios at Lake Starnberg rank among the most successful in Europe. Success like this doesn't come about accidentally. Mandoki writes his songs at night. In hotel rooms in Moscow, Budapest, Berlin, Rio, Shanghai, but also Wolfsburg, New York, Los Angeles – as soon as he finds a hook, he writes down the notes and the lyrics.

During the day he is sought-after not only as an artist, but also as an intellectual. Mandoki is on a par with Europe's decision makers and opinion leaders, many of whom are also close personal friends. He therefore learns and reflects upon many things that many other musicians have never even heard about. Things that become part of his songs.
ManDoki SoulMates AQUARELLE resembles a musician's life legacy. One musician? Far from it! Far more than 20 musicians have contributed their emotions, their know-how and their thoughts. And also you will become part of this musical family, yes, even the listener will become our SoulMate!

The second last ManDoki album „People In Room N°. 8” was introduced by popular German show master Thomas Gottschalk in „Wetten, dass...?” in the year 1997 with the following words: „A far from ordinary performance in „Wetten, dass...?”: no less than 139 golden records come marching in now, 29 platinum records, 26 grammys! This is unprecedented!“

...and the story continues...