Nami Shimada - Sun Shower Remixes

As much as I worship the ground he walked on, this is probably one of the very, very few remixes that Larry Levan did that I felt was not as good as the original version. I was fortunate enough to get 2 copies of the original mix of "Sun Shower" back when SEICHI Terada was promoting it as a blank label 12" single. The original production is flawless IMO, and my feeling at the time was that Larry was doing a remix just to please his Japanese admirers and pick up some spending money, and NOT because the song needed any fixing or improvement. Larry added/redid the drum sound to make it sound slightly more "modern", and he screwed around with other tracks slightly, but it's not really happening. The original sounds amazing as is, the original drum sounds are classic and timeless, and the cool 3 dimmensional effects are clearly audible in the mix, AND it's an audiophile production to begin with. Larry's remix was DAT based, and in those days, digital DAT sound was nothing to get excited about compared to high-quality analogue. Discogs lists a bootleg of the original under the name "Soichi" Terada, which is not the proper spelling. This IS certainly worth owning for the Larry Levan completist, but the main value here is that this is a legitimate, legally licensed pressing of the original vocal and instrumental mixes, and for that reason alone I think this is a 5/5 release.