Tolerance, ANONYM

Vanity, 1980; out of print

9 tracks, 40:08

Tolerance were a mysterious Japanese duo consisting of Junko Tange on voice, synth, and piano and Masami Yoshikawa on guitar. There's a good chance both performed on other electronics too. For this, their first LP, Tolerance created an absolute masterpiece of minimal electronic atmospherics. The guitars alone cover a large variety of styles, ranging from gentle sliding to folky noodling to full-on skronk. The accompanying sounds also manage to cover quite a range, while all being decidedly experimental. Spoken female vocals (which seem to be in French!) mix in effortlessly with strange electronic rhythms and gentle Satie-esque piano, creating a unique sound. The electronics used truly aren't easy to identify, and may even be homemade. Each track is excellent, and they have some truly odd and interesting names. "I Wanna Be A Homicide", "Laughin In The Shadows", "Tecno-Room"..... really, the song titles alone should tell you this is great! This could even be considered Japan's krautrock album! Loose comparisons to such other visionaries as the Sperm and Moolah can be made, and this definitely holds a place as one of those truly unusual albums that every serious avant-gardist should hear. They went on to record another album, DIVIN, which is almost as good. Sadly, neither is available currently (there was a grey-area vinyl of DIVIN a few years back), and both are in sore need of a reissue.