Label Focus – Happiness Therapy
French label Happiness Therapy is celebrating five years in the game and they’re marking it with a new various artists collection exploring a wide spread of deep house varieties and featuring the likes of B FROM E, Baka G & Denyl Brook and more.
The French label is the baby of artist Crowd Control aka Simon Blondeau, so we tasked the man himself to give us the full low down on the label…
WHAT’S THE NAME OF YOUR LABEL, AND WHO RUNS IT?
Happiness Therapy – and I (Crowd Control) run it.
WHEN & WHY DID THE LABEL START?
After five years of running events, I wanted to extend my artistic vision through the medium of a label. I created it in 2018.
GIVE US A BRIEF SUMMARY OF WHAT YOU’VE RELEASED SINCE THEN….
20 vinyl EPs that also got released in digital, an album, seven digital compilations and two birthday releases.
WHAT QUALITIES ARE YOU LOOKING FOR IN THE MUSIC YOU RELEASE?
I’m looking for uplifting house music. The beauty of house is that it has many subgenres, so we can work on very variate releases, with all the tracks having that energy that I like in common.
WHAT KIND OF VISUAL IDENTITY DOES THE LABEL HAVE (ARTWORK, VIDEOS ETC) ?
As some iconic labels did before, we spent months getting everything right. Getting the logo right; getting the design just so. We didn’t want to look like any other label, and we wanted to be easily recognisable in the record stores!
WHAT’S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST SELLING RELEASE TO DATE? TELL US A BIT ABOUT IT AND WHY YOU THINK IT WAS SO POPULAR.
So far it is Jesse Bru’s The Coast album. It’s a 15 track projects that we released in 2020 between autumn & winter. It’s a beautiful piece of music that features a wide range of electronic music genres (electro, breaks, house), with nice intro, outro & interludes. I think it was perfectly fitting the seasons we released it in and the object itself (and the merch coming with it) was cute.
NAME ONE RELEASE THAT YOU THINK DESERVED TO GET MORE ATTENTION THAN IT DID
Dub Striker’s ‘Birds Of A Feather’ EP. Sadly we released that one and Covid just happened. Clubs got shut down on the day of the release party. It’s a very authentic house EP with a dope remix from Garrett David!
IF YOU COULD SIGN ANY ARTIST, ALIVE OR DEAD, WHO WOULD YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?
I think I’d love to be in the studio with Soichi Terada and work on any project with him. I’d love to involve Space Dimension Controller as well and see where it goes. The sensibility in their music is unmatched and the way they write music brings me peace and happiness. That’d be such a moment!
WHICH OTHER LABELS DO YOU ADMIRE AND WHY?
If I had to name one it would probably be Gerd Janson with his label Running Back. I admire his work and his longevity. He managed to create his own visual and musical identity and he constantly releases quality music and artists.
WHAT CAN WE LOOK TO FROM YOUR LABEL NEXT?
We just released our five year anniversary project – with vinyl arriving in the Juno shop soon – and we’re about to announce the first two volumes of Jesse Bru’s EP series. That’s a new adventure starting and we’re super excited, it’s called ‘Chronicles of Bru’. You can also expect more music from Baka G, Strandtuch, Wooka, B FROM E and myself in 2024. Stay tuned!