Divin (1981)

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. Junko Tange's second and final album - a minimalistic, phantasmagoric masterpiece of distant, dreamlike voices woven through pulsating, dubbed-out drum machines, synths and static, originally issued by Osaka's Vanity Records in 1981. Divin' 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. Did this unassuming dental student (who vanished from the music world following this release) inadvertently invent dub techno? You be the judge. Label head Yuzuru Agi said this was his favorite Vanity release, and it's not hard to see why. Remastered by Stephan Mathieu from new transfers of the original analog tapes, this fully authorized 2LP (@45rpm) is the definitive edition