Lethe is one of the many projects of Minneapolis based noise & ambient artist Cory Strand. This project started in May 2012, and has so far amassed 12 or so CDR releases(with many been multi disc sets), and these releases have seen the project moving it’s sound from hopeless drone matter, onto punishingly HNW, though to death ambience,  onto greyed sub-tone studies, and beyond.  With the project taking onsuch varied themes as bleak woodland isolation, David Lynch, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and HP Lovecraft

For his source material Strand has used confessional interviews with Bundy recorded in 1989, just before his death. And in particular on this release he uses the interview segment were Bundy details the abduction & murder of 18 year old Georgeann Hawkins- who disappeared in Seattle  on June 11th.  No trace of Ms Hawkins has ever been found, but in his confession Bundy claimied to have severed her head & kept it in a separate location to the rest of the body. Bundy kept the head for several days, applying make-up, washing it’s hair & carrying out necrophilia with it.

The release opens up with “She Was Still Lucid”, and this 26.16 track finds Strand offering up a buzzing ‘n’ battering slice of walled noise. The sluggish-to-mid paced track is a fairly loose yet malevolent mix of billowing ‘n’ buzzing down a tunnel like noise matter, which is undercut by thin churning crackle, & sudden shots of low end purr. This ‘wall’ nicely mangers to mix together suffocating tension, & slowly ebbing/sluggish textural drift- which I guess nicely captures the feel of a live slowly but brutal surely been stubbed out.

The second & last track comes in the form of “Body Not Found”, and this 26.35 track is an excise in stark ‘n’ brooding ambience. The track is built around a shifting web of faded & weathered ambient tones- on display here are: several billowing, shifting & aquatic rumbling tones, and these weird  sort of backwards clashing ‘n’ shimmering yet almost harmonic  textural drifts. The tracks elements seem to approach  you, & then start fading back again and this pattern repeats through-out the track- so you can never really fully define the full shape of the textures on display. Also as the track progresses it all seems to get slowly but surely deeper & deeper into this reverb licked fog. The track is deeply haunting slice of stripped yet encasing ambience, yet deep down there is something rather unsettling & unpleasant about it all- which of course perfect fits the tracks title & theme.

"1989 Confessions, Vol. One" comes in a edition of  twenty five copies, and as a release it gives you a fairly brief(compared with some of Strands multiple disc sets) sonic insight into what Lethe & Mr Stands sound is about. Also both pieces nicely fit the subject matter with the first track focusing on brood wrapped intensity, and the second on chilling ambience with a unpleasant undercurrent.