Soichi Terada Crack Magazine Feature

Words by: Mar­cus Barnes
Pho­tog­ra­phy: Aves­ta Keshtmand

”Soichi Ter­a­da is just about com­ing through the oth­er side of a bout of ​“hard jet lag” when he logs onto Zoom. He arrived in Europe a week ago from his home­town of Meguro City in Tokyo, and was thrown straight into a brac­ing tour­ing sched­ule that so far has tak­en in Edin­burgh, Man­ches­ter, Lon­don and Ams­ter­dam – where he’s call­ing from. You’d for­give him for feel­ing a bit dazed; the gigs, he says, have been busy, in stark con­trast to Tokyo, where there’s still restric­tions on nightlife. Even so, Ter­a­da is in excel­lent spir­its, his warm smile a balm for the soul.

Ter­a­da is in Europe to reveal his new live set, which knits togeth­er crisp vari­a­tions on deep house from his cher­ished back cat­a­logue with brand new mate­r­i­al from his forth­com­ing album Asakusa Light. His first LP of new mate­r­i­al in over 25 years, the album is a cul­mi­na­tion of a suc­cess­ful five-year run – pan­dem­ic aside – that has seen the DJ, pro­duc­er and com­put­er game music com­pos­er dis­cov­ered by a new school of club­go­ers, plac­ing him at the receiv­ing end of long-over­due recog­ni­tion beyond the bor­ders of Japan. The late-peri­od pur­ple patch was set in motion by a 2015 com­pi­la­tion of music from his label Far East Record­ings, mas­ter­mind­ed by Hunee and released by influ­en­tial Dutch label Rush Hour. A for­tu­itous turn of events for which he’s still thankful.”

”Thir­ty years on, this spell of dis­cov­ery, excite­ment and melan­choly under­pins the entire mood on Asakusa Light. It is, he says, a delib­er­ate attempt to cap­ture the feel­ings of an era. The con­cept came to him dur­ing the first wave of the pan­dem­ic, when time itself seemed to unrav­el. ​“Ini­tial­ly, I felt like, ​‘We just can’t do any­thing, no events or live per­for­mances?’” he says. ​“But I start­ed to think this must be an occa­sion to do some­thing that I have nev­er tried.” Many artists, faced with ground­ed tours and paused projects, used the down­time to take stock and reflect. Ter­a­da began to har­ness this intro­spec­tive impulse to cre­ate a new suite of tracks.”

Check out the full fea­ture here.