Tolerance

Divin

Genre: INDUSTRIAL / WAVE / ELECTRO

2LP (Black Vinyl)

Boomkat Product Review:

This one's got us cross-eyed. 'Divin' was released in 1981 but would still have us puzzled if it had debuted in 2023. K-holed percussive psychedelia and blasted synapse electrical weirdness that manages to link together West Mineral/XXL axis brainmelt, Phoenecia's high-er minded electroid deconstructions and Ron Morelli's beatbox dirt.

Despite all Japan's technological and cultural advances in the 1970s and '80s, it's hard to believe this one's over 40 years old. 'Divin' was dental student Junko Tange's second Tolerance album, following 1979's surreal 'Anonym'. It once again features Masami Yoshikawa on vocals, standing out as one of the most peculiar and prophetic records of the era, pre-empting ideas that wouldn't be approached so thoroughly again until the IDM/dub techno era a good decade-and-a-half later.

Still not sure? 'Pulse Static (Tranqillia)' steers drum machines and synths thru a chain of delays, EQs and distortion units, Junko creates a sound that's an impromptu hybrid of electro, early electronics and dub. Radiophonic blips ring out over sculpted low-end rumbles that don't sound a million miles from Monolake's early Chain Reaction experiments or Huerco S's more recent fusions of foggy ambience and downstream techno. If you heard Special Guest DJ's DJ Paradise cuts from the legendary "bblisss" compilation, this track equivocates an indistinguishable soundscape using grottier, more frazzled source material.

'Misa (Gig's Tapes In "C")' reaches out even further into the void as stuttering vocals faintly gush over reversed beats and synths, providing the album with a mood stabilizer before the rhythmic onslaught of 'Sound Round'. Here Junko approximates the hands-on gear-forward outsider techno that Ron Morelli's L.I.E.S. imprint would make its signature a few decades later. Yoshikawa's vocals appear thru the mud like gold in a prospecting pan, but it's Junko's heaving rhythms that make the biggest impression, weaving in-and-out of each other with the kind of ferocity that's lost as sounds are streamlined and ultimately tamed. It's obvious why US vanguard minds like Wolf Eyes' John Olsen treasure this material so much - Junko's unrestrained creativity and subsequent disappearance is hard aesthetic evidence and an enigmatic story to boot. Being provided with dissociated hinterland psychedelia like 'Motor Fan' - a five-minute trip into the nightmare basement synth zone that's nearly unaffiliated with any horror movie reissue or another - just makes it all the more indispensable.

Fucking genius.

2LP (Black Vinyl) (0)