About

“Whether they realise it or not, millions of people know the music of Soichi Terada. After all, the Tokyo producer's childlike melodies have bleeped out of consoles across the world as the soundtrack to the Ape Escape games. Until then, Terada seemed to be playing a game of his own, one that could be called Deep House Simulator. From the early '90s onwards, Terada's Far East Recordings has specialised in Eastern impressions of Western deep house. On Sounds From The Far East, Hunee compiles the best of Terada's tracks for Rush Hour, alongside a few from his compatriot Shinichiro Yokota. Parts of Sounds From The Far East are like the aural equivalent of Amerikamura, the Osaka district with a model Statue Of Liberty and the stars and stripes strewn in every window. But whereas that neighbourhood retains a sense of Japanese character beneath all the Americana, Terada's take on US house and garage isn't just indistinguishable from its original source—it's just as good as the real deal. With its pounding piano and diva vocal, "CPM" is a house cut Masters At Work would be proud of. "Shake Yours," too, is loaded with New York flavour. Terada's love for that city was reciprocated when Larry Levan remixed "Sun Shower," a track he produced in 1989 for the Japanese singer Nami Shimada. That one appears here as a reworked instrumental with beefed-up disco stabs, crisper drum fills and a faint echo of Madonna's "Vogue."