Lustmord

First published to mark Brian Williams’s 55th birthday in January 2014, STM 103 opens a door into the records behind Lustmord. Dub, film music, jazz, voices and electronic depth sit together in a selection that is more intimate than his reputation might lead one to expect.

The Los Angeles-based Welsh musician, composer, sound designer and visual artist helped define dark ambient. His early work developed alongside his involvement with SPK in the 1980s. By the time of this mix, his recordings had appeared through Hydra Head, Blackest Ever Black and his own Side Effects and Vaultworks imprints. Across them, sound becomes a space one can enter: vast, detailed and difficult to measure.

The space between notes

Here, Williams brings together formative influences and discoveries he enjoyed listening to at home. Some had directly informed his own work, especially its spaces between notes. In his account of the selection, he did not assign it a hidden message or a fixed emotional narrative. The connections emerge through the records themselves.

Nineteen selections, with dates in the original tracklist ranging from 1957 to 2009, form a coherent passage across very different recording traditions. Jacob Miller, Keith Hudson and Rhythm & Sound share space with Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, Fever Ray, Locust and Reload. Jerry Goldsmith’s Alien and Roy Budd’s Get Carter bring film scores into the same listening room.

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Dub as a way of listening

Lustmord’s dub of Puscifer’s “Children of Dub” sits among these selections. It belongs here naturally: Williams was already listening to dub and buying Jamaican records in the late 1970s. Echo, bass weight and the movement of sound through empty space are central to the mix’s character.

Live rhythms, expressive singing and instrumental melodies move alongside more abyssal electronic passages. The historical recording “No More, My Lawd”, credited in the original list to the compilation Negro Prison Songs, introduces another register of voice and recorded space. The historical release title is retained in the tracklist.

The original feature reached for Salvador Dalí’s Moonlight as a visual parallel: abstract forms suggesting mystery and nostalgia. The music offers its own changing shapes. Its detail and shifts in tension reward a sustained listen, with room for each record to leave something behind before the next arrives.

Records and connections

Justinas S13 on Lustmord

I wanted this mix back in view because it lets us hear an artist through what he makes room for. Lustmord’s sense of scale does not depend on a single genre. A dub version, a film cue and a sung line can all open a space larger than the sounds occupying it. This selection makes that connection unusually easy to follow.

The work has kept moving. Much Unseen Is Also Here arrived in 2024. At the time of this update, The Pulse of Atoms, made with Dave Lombardo, is announced for 2 October 2026. Alongside In Dub, these later records extend the listening around STM 103 without changing the original selection.

Justinas / S13, 2026. The mix remains the original 2014 recording.