Happening

Description

After nearly three years and sixty demos, Launder’s debut album is finally here and is called Happening. In 2019, musician John Cudlip, raised in Orange County and based in Los Angeles, signed with Ghostly International for his project developed from informal sessions with his friends Jackson Phillips (Day Wave), Soko and Zachary Cole Smith (DIIV). With live shows suspended in 2020, he dove headfirst into writing and arranging an overflow of ideas. John also embraced sobriety, redirecting his once destructive addictive tendencies toward studio work. All his thoughts were absorbed by melodies and textures, all his resources swallowed up by music gear. Every hum, hiss and rustle on this record was all that mattered to him. The resulting whole is a massive and thoughtful debut album that he is proud of. Across its thirteen songs, Happening is timeless. Cathartic and tender at once, it takes aim at something bigger than melody alone. It draws from the great indie rock artists while being illuminated by modern, cautious introspection. To record the album, John Cudlip and his collaborators — including Chase Meier (bass), Bryan DeLeon (drums), Nathan Hawelu (lead guitar) — joined co-producer, engineer and mixer Sonny DiPerri (My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails, DIIV) at New Monkey Studio, the analog/digital recording studio in Van Nuys, California, once owned by Elliott Smith. John devised his dream setup: he used an alternate tuning on a fleet of Fenders to make his left-handed playing easier, experimented with different amps (a late-70s Marshall JMP carried much of the sound) and tracked vocals on Elliott Smith’s old Neumann U48 microphone and Fairchild compressor. It is clear to the band that something magnetic shaped this record. While debuts are often marked by raw potential, Launder has crafted a perfectly honed collection that unfolds in the moment. Somewhere at the intersection of 90s lo-fi and shoegaze, Happening is the sound of a songwriter pushing his limits with thrilling, addictive results.