Lethe — To Drown
Lethe is one of the main projects of Minneapolis based Cory Strand(Lindskold, Necronom IV, Yog-Sothoth, solo work), and so far the prolific project has put out around eleven releases(many of them multi disc sets) since it started in May 2012. And these releases have gone from hopeless drone, to HNW, to death ambience, to greyed sub-tone studies.
This CDR come in the house style Altar of Waste colour sleeve DVD case. The double sided sleeve features on it’s outside cover a octopus tentacle disappearing off into murky sea darkness. And the reverse inside picture features a old oil painting of a monster squid type creature attacking & destroy a port based city. Also included in the case is an small black piece of art card that features embossed picture of an octopus.
The seventy six minute long track on offer here is apparently built around heavily manipulated live guitar improvisation. And the track conists of fairly quietly recorded mixture of blurred & shimmering textures that take in muffled looped judders & locked grey billows- these are laid out in a fairly unchanging slowed haze map of suffocating sound, with the only real change/ progresses is that from time to time the drones become even more muffled & grey. The track does certainty conjure up a feeling of great despair, and if you shut your eyes you can almost imagine your in a Victoriana driving bell that’s fall down & down into endless aquatic dark-ness.
"To Drown" mangers to create very well an atmosphere of slowly drowning hopelessness, but on the whole I found the piece a little one dimensional compared with some of Strand’s other drone-work. So while I enjoy this release I can’t say it stands as one of my favourite of Lethe's work or Stand base drone/ambient work. But if you’re after grey 'n' hope sucking aquatic based drone this will be right up your street.