Dedekind Cut - Tahoe

A Closer Listen

OK, the tag at the top of the page says ‘Ambient’ and the label is Kranky but don’t put Tahoe on expecting to be borne aloft on clouds of ambient fluffiness for an hour.  Dedekind Cut’s new album is an altogether tougher prospect – an over-saturated, needles-in-the-red, near industrial ambient record, closer in spirit to work found on Hospital Productions (which has been a previous home to Dedekind Cut releases) than much of Kranky’s output.

Now that’s established, let’s approach the work from a different direction. The cover lists a number of different locations and distances, almost as if they are suggested walks or bike rides to enjoy whilst listening.  Now, if I go out into the country it’s generally because I want to experience nature with all five senses so I leave the headphones in the bag and listen to the wind in the trees, the insects in the grass and the birds on the wing – that sort of thing. Tahoe on the other hand provides a listening experience which in parts throws you into a scene from Eraserhead. Indeed, at times it sounded like wires were shaking themselves loose: I had to check the loudspeakers’ wiring when I played it through my hi-fi.

All that, though, follows the blissful opening of “Equity”, which pulls in all the usual suspects of ambient music – a steadily pulsating organ, an ethereal choir, all gently wafted along on a soft summer breeze – to captivating effect; having established that he can do your traditional ambient music, Dedekind Cut goes some way to subvert the genre. The second track “Crossing Guard” starts off as a grey, ghostly hum with the odd glitch for good measure, then midway through the ten-minute duration, an edgier, sharp tone gradually fades in: it’s subtle but gives the track a needling tension in contrast to the opener’s softer quality.

So it continues, with periods of softer ambience giving way to harsher tones and crackles, hums, and – in “MMXIX” – throat singing. It makes for an disorientating experience; several listens in, I’m never quite sure what is going to happen when, but I’ve a pretty good idea that the pleasant choral textures are going to give way to a far more intense, industrial sound within the next few minutes.

It’s a fascinating progression for Fred Welton Warmsley III, who previously recorded as Lee Bannon, producing beats for hip hop albums by the likes of Inspectah Deck and Joey Badass before going off and making this mutated ambient music as Dedekind Cut. I think, at this point, he’s found his calling and Tahoe is one to check out for fans of Oneohtrix Point Never’s work. It isn’t, though, an album to listen to when engaging with nature – you’ll end up cowering behind a rock somewhere. (Jeremy Bye)

Available here

Drowned In Sound 80

The last Lee Bannon record, Pattern of Excel (2015) was both a beginning and an end. Leaning towards new age in its embrace of calm ambience, it was seemingly lightyears from the drum ‘n’ bass workouts of Alternate/Endings. In reality, however, the records ultimately both emphasised – above all else – their maker’s attention to detail. The same has been true of the early Dedekind Cut releases. The phenomenal EPs American Zen and The Expanding Domain, and the spectacular debut LP $uccessor showcased both Warmsley’s talent for subtly multi-layered soundscapes and, once again, his willingness to toy with listener expectations. 'Ambient' these records may largely have been, but they weren’t the comforting outings such a descriptor often makes listeners expect.

It’s all the more surprising, then, that Tahoe is such a comfort. The Expanding Domain bristled with the same uneasy intensity of Moon Milk or Remote Viewer era Coil. Tahoe, in contrast, is disarmingly gentle throughout the vast majority of its run time. This is cleansing music, which is perhaps appropriate for an album named after the largest alpine lake in North America. The slow softness of the album is undeniably reminiscent of such a body of water. Like many a great ambient album, Tahoe is both constantly stationary and constantly moving, with textures seeming to bleed imperceptibly into one another.

There are one or two moments when Tahoe threatens to break off into more disturbing territory. The most significant comes approximately three minutes into the (12-minute) penultimate track ‘Hollow Earth’, when a colossal waterfall of noise suddenly erodes the spectral vocals that have given the piece its early character. This new tone gradually opens up, like the cavernous jaws of some great beast, threatening to swallow everything that’s gone before on Tahoe whole. Things return to quietude almost as suddenly, and by the time ‘Hollow Earth’ draws to its conclusion it is with some of the most transcendently light sounds on the entire record.

This brief hint at darker climes contained towards Tahoe’s conclusion is important. No matter how soothing much of the material contained here is, this record emerges out of difficult times for the natural beauty it could easily be seen to be celebrating. Lake Tahoe, in all its majesty, is as threatened as any other site of natural wonder by the challenges facing our environment, exacerbated as they are by the unwillingness of political leaders to promote the ideals of the earth above the ideals of capital. Just as the peaceful sonic world of Tahoe is threatened with destruction by the currents just below the surface, so too are the opportunities for peace in the world around us. This record may well work as ambient escapism, but in its serene tenderness it’s also a reminder of the fragility of all that surrounds us.

Pitchfork 72

Erstwhile hip-hop beatmaker Lee Bannon fully embraces ambient music’s conventions on an album that shifts between placid states and disquiet.