An underground warehouse rehearsal space for the development of new and emerging music.
Internally, a theater production. To the outside, it presents as nightlife club culture.
Closed to the public — yet exposed for myth-building, rumor, and exclusivity. A deliberately paradoxical underground event model.
Ninety percent parking garage. Commercial space clings to the southwest edges along Marquette and 10th. Upstairs: a working music studio and office. Below: the lab — first floor, buried deeper inside the structure.
Enter through the garage. The approach is already underground. The concrete brutalism is not a problem to hide. It is the aesthetic.
The path in is the lab’s first statement — concrete, ramps, low light, no lobby performance. Arrival is part of the myth.
A prototype noise study — primitive medium, unfinished on purpose.
Primitive noise is our medium. Taste over chops. Continuity over polish.
Hypothesis: Sentiment for novel art requires persistent exposure.
The nature and failure of “experimental music” is that it does not persist long enough for an audience to develop familiarity or build feelings for it. Continuity and sentiment are paramount.
- New musical territory discovered through experimentalism.
- Establish convention and plant a flag.
- Champion through persistent exposure to an audience.
- Sentiment and popularity observed as a metric of success.
What makes this project exceptional to what we have in club and nightlife culture today?
The juxtaposition of significant financial investment with radical decision-making and execution. A paradoxical business model that should not work. Contradiction is a tool used in seduction.
Breaking the mold: hired actors play the role of musicians and performers. Eliminate the musician’s ego.
Today you don’t need musical chops to create music. You need taste. Eliminate time and energy wasted over engineering music. Primitive noise is our medium. Cult ideology and manipulation of the emotional state is our end game.
Put Minneapolis — and our partners — on the international map as leaders at the forefront of music and culture, through forced exposure.
Visual and sonic references for the lab — industrial, alien, theatrical. Mood board material, not decoration.
Simulation Media Assets — a record label and technology company — is the vehicle for exporting this music beyond Minneapolis. Without it, the work stays trapped locally. Modern exposure requires tools and methods built for attention; SMA is that apparatus.
Investment in this step is critical and comes later — Phase 2, after the laboratory has something proven to push into the world.
Success is not owning a venue. It is building a sound and a culture strong enough to fill one.
When this work can sell out rooms of 500–1,000, we hand that demand to partners who already operate at that scale — carried by a cohort of artists, not a single name.
Three phases. Phase 1 success is finishing the space and making it usable — nothing more. Phase 2 is a year of incubation — mistakes, groove, and a few small interest tests along the way. Phase 3 is broader exposure: marketing, SMA execution, and fuller pilot contact.
Phase 1 capitalization target: ~$525,000