Oftentimes, as an exercise for myself, I choose promos from our list for artists I know I have heard of but have never dove into before. Often this will lead to much outcry from my friends on staff (“What do you MEAN you’ve never listened to [band] before?!”), but rarely do I feel daunted by the challenge; everyone starts somewhere and no one on earth was born with a Cold Spring sampler clutched in their infant fists. Yet here, now, I find myself before something monolithic in scope: Much Unseen is Also Here, the latest release from pioneering artist Lustmord, which in and of itself is an immense slab of haunting, ethereal sounds and emotions.

The sheer breadth of the impact Brian Williams, under the nom de plume of Lustmord, has made on underground art couldn’t even fit in a review like this. Over nearly forty-five years of musical creation, he has collaborated with artists ranging from industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle and Coil’s John Balance to Wes Borland of Limp Bizkit, singer Karin Parker, and even Tool. Lustmord’s third full-length, Heresy, is widely recognized as the foundation of the dark ambient subgenre. He has contributed sound design to films like The Crow and Underworld, as well as video games like Assassin’s Creed and League of Legends.

Whether front and center or playing a more behind-the-scenes roll, Lustmord’s music has been a part of so many things I’ve loved my whole life, yet Much Unseen is Also Here marks the first proper Lustmord album I’ve ever sat down and engaged with on its own. What lay in wait for me is an hour and twenty minutes of eerie, minimalist dark ambient. Much Unseen is music that brings out the eyes in every shadow, a coldness you can feel in your bones, a sparseness that has you on edge waiting for what might break forth from beyond. It is an album that is cinematic in the most direct sense of the term, keeping its engagement steady with ebb and flow of minute shifting textures and the introduction of elements like strings, minimalist keyboards, and the occasional all-encompassing sub bass drone in the same way horror movies like Skinamarink enthralled me by choosing to do so much with the balance of tension and vast emptiness, to say nothing of the way both pieces of art managed to find a way to crawl under my skin.

The logical endpoint one might ask, then, is where does this album stack up in the grand scheme of a legacy as large as Lustmord’s? This is why the exercise of diving in blind is so fun for me; I don’t know the answer to this question. I can only speak to this album for what it is, now in this moment, and maybe that’s a better way to approach it. Lustmord himself has said of his own creations, “My music is not meant to be explained – only listened to as a means of exposing the sheer insignificance of our primitive thoughts and actions within the vast scale of the cosmos – a scale which we as a species are ill equipped to comprehend.” My review, my own thoughts on where and how this album stacks up in the grand scheme of things, is ultimately my own attempt to grasp at smoke and draw meaning from it. Much Unseen is Also Here is a work that has to be experienced to be understood. Set aside your expectations and let it move you as it is, as you are.

-Vincent

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Much Unseen is Also Here is available now via Pelagic Records. For more information on Lustmord, visit the artist’s official website.