Dedekind Cut's second full-length arrives on Kranky, fulfilling a lifelong dream for the artist. It continues much in the same direction as 2016's $uccessor, balancing new age meditation with fear and anguish, expressing inner conflict and searching for serenity. It begins calmly, with soft yet slightly brooding waves and
William Basinski-like drone loops, along with chirping crickets nestled underneath the washes of static. Things start to skew toward the edge of panic on the title track, where rushing water and melancholy synth-strings are undercut by a faint, high-pitched tone, causing the mood to become slightly disorienting. The multi-movement dream "MMXIX" is a dark subversion of new age music, contrasting rapidly spiraling notes and somewhat alarming choral vocals (as well as a bit of throat singing) with vast, weightless clouds and light beams. It's hard to tell whether the vocals and nature sounds are real, synthetic, or a hybrid, lending to the mystery and surrealness. "De-Civilization" is much more direct, with supremely devastated synth pads that sound like the astonishment of returning to one's hometown and finding the entire civilization to be destroyed and lost. "Spiral" is the most abrasive piece, with a noisy guitar loop reminiscent of early Kranky artists like
Roy Montgomery. The rest of the album isn't quite as turbulent, but even its soothing moments flow into passages of darkness and uncertainty. Overall,
Dedekind Cut sounds much more at peace this time than he did in 2016, as
Tahoe doesn't contain the same intense level of industrial sound design as $uccessor. That said,
Tahoe is far from being simple, and is much more emotionally complex than the average ambient album. ~ Paul Simpson