Description:
Lustmord – Much Unseen Is Also Here (2024)
Review:
Over 40 years into his career, Brian Williams returns with some of Lustmord’s strongest material to date. Gone are the slightly regrettable martial industrial elements of his earliest work, which haven’t aged particularly well despite helping to define the dark ambient genre in the first place. Instead, Much Unseen is Also Here is a subtle, eerie transmission of dread and dark wonder — the audio equivalent of showing-rather-than-telling. It’s some of the finest 21st-Century dark ambient you’re likely to find, harboring the cinematic scope of labels like Cryo Chamber but with the audacity to shirk the digital sheen, which can sometimes come across as the musical equivalent of Michael Bay’s lens flares. Instead, Much Unseen is Also Here dares to be subtle while still remaining accessible and compelling. The bulk of the album’s monumental 80-minute runtime has the austerity of underground drone or avant-garde classical compositions. You’ll rarely hear more than three elements at any given time, and melodies, rhythm or harmonies are in short supply. Instead, Williams speaks in a lexicon of otherworldly reverbs and shifting, evolving sustained tone. There are recognizable musical elements. They’re just smudged and skewed almost beyond recognition. A bass drone emerging from the depths on album opener, “Behold a Voice as Thunder,” sounds like John Williams’ Jaws theme played at 10 bpm. “Invocation of the Nameless One”—the most overtly musical moment of the album and one of its crown jewels—sounds like Bohren & der Club of Gore interpreting one of Eduard Artemyev’s medievalist Tarkovsky film scores, with a reedy oboe romance riding atop a Fender Rhodes motif that rises and falls in slow motion. The rest of the album deals more in implications and suggestions. “Entrails of the God Machine” is built with nothing more than distant sub-bass, a sustained Sonar synth and some dank field recordings. “An Angel Dissected” is even more slight, with just ebony bass, a two-note pipe organ refrain and the barest flicker of celestial synth, like a flaming halo casting sharp shadows on rough-hewn walls with its pale fire. “A Shadow Cast Upon the Deep” is just some groaning Gothic synth strings outlined against an aurora of starshine synth and a hissing, vaporous wind. That “show, don’t tell,” concept returns to create the sonic equivalent of playing with shadows and tension rather than drenching the screen in splatter and gore. It’s a deep, immersive experience, one that’s befitting of the evocative, atmospheric cover art, which depicts ageless Giger-esque idols in a murky, subterranean realm. It’s eerie stuff, but it’s also soothing and compelling, inviting you to throw on some good headphones and let the music transport you again and again. Williams is one of those rare creators who never stops innovating. Every album is better than his last, which is saying something for a musician nearly half-a-century deep into his artistic trajectory. Much Unseen is Also Here is some of William’s best work to date, a brilliant introduction for new fans just encountering the artist for the first time and a bloody, sooty gem for those who have been around for a while. — by J. Simpson on spectrumculture.com
Track List:
01 - Behold a Voice As Thunder
02 - Entrails of the God Machine
03 - An Angel Dissected
04 - A Shadow Cast Upon the Deep
05 - Invocation of the Nameless One
06 - Their Souls Asunder
07 - Hence Shall They Be Devoured All of Them
08 - Other Woes Are Yet to Come
Media Report:
Genre: ambient
Origin: Los Angeles, California, USA 
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)
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