Alva Armless Kid Mara Lakour Ortella*
Virtual Area

Well-established French label Happiness Therapy is celebrating three years of releases this month ! To commemorate such a milestone, the imprint is releasing a nine-track VA in the form of 3 Years of Happiness. Featured guests include DJOKO and B From E, whilst several firm label favorites also appear on the VA, teaming up to produce a set of exclusive collaborations.“After these wonderful first three years of existence, and the recent success of Jesse Bru’s album on the label, I wanted to give it back to our fans by releasing our biggest project to date!” - Simon Blondeau aka Crowd Control.Each track embodies the Happiness Therapy ethos through and through, as does each artist’s relationship with the label. From Crowd Control's maiden release in 2018, to DJOKO’s soon-to-be debut, the family feel runs deep: resulting in a compilation of feel-good, house-inspired musical goodness that encapsulates just what Happiness Therapy is about !

Traveling from dancefloor-geared groovers to space-ready euphoria, space•lab’s fifth EP lands with four otherworldly tracks. Kicking things off, we have the swirling atmospheres, trippy vocal samples, and broken grooves of Dylan Forbes’s ‘Resoblaster’. This is followed up by Mariiin’s ‘Restless Mind’, which journeys to the tonally darker reaches of classic prog-trance, with its spun-out synth melody and deep, driving bassline. Next up, Rambal Cochet, the artist behind space•lab’s fourth EP, makes a return with the spacious, hypnotic wormholer, ‘Mushroom Hill Zone’. Rounding things off, punchy kick drums combine with zero-gravity atmospheres for KAWAII SAN’s drifting-through-cyberspace groover, ‘Nuclear’.

After a few silent years, the Beau Mot Plage crew is finally relaunching its label with a kick ! The record showcases the skills of BMP’s co-founder, Alexis Namur. The Frenchman has been crafting his sound quietly for many years, finding influences in the music he digs. The result is a 4 track debut EP that oscillates between straight-forward tech-house groovers and subtle slow-burners, sprinkled with that 90’s progressive vibe that we love so much.

French young talent Hyas is up next on Chat Noir Rec. for the first solo record of the label. Our naughty cat is now at the club meeting some friends, ready to enjoy a big night out. Hyas provides the soundtrack of this night with a strong 4-tracker which features his influences : house, acid and a pinch of UKG. French producer & DJ, Hyas is also the co-founder of the Bardouin Music imprint dedicated to acid sounds and just released a split EP with Sentiments on his famous Light On Earth label, he is definetely an artist to watch out and we are thrilled to welcome him for his first solo EP on vinyl.

Gated's second compilation takes inspiration from the path less travelled, the earthen underbelly that binds disparate threads to its wonky centre.So while the music here is from artists all over the world, each track is grounded in a quirky, off-kilter sound, from the opener by UK hardware house don Perseus Traxx to the closer by Space Agent, the alias of a yet-to-be unveiled techno artist.In between we get Gated stalwarts Guavid, Lucita Octans, Acidulant, and Lloyd Stellar with their takes on the wonk, plus glassy-eyed electro from Austin, USA-based Terrestrial Access Network, unusually banging fare from man of the moment MOY, and broken techno from the criminally under-appreciated Stacie-Anne Churchman. There's also the reissued and remastered sub-bass squelcher Beta Carotene by Modified Starch, which was originally released in 1998 on UK breaks label Slalom.Play it loud.