Brian Williams

Williams began as a recording artist within the industrial genre, working with Chris & Cosey and SPK. Adopting the moniker Lustmord, he continued to employ the industrial aesthetic while employing reverb and similar effects to evoke an atmosphere of cosmic horror. Starting with the 1989 album Heresy, Lustmord albums have been centered on manipulating sampled recordings with a computer. These samples included field recordings made in locations such as crypts, caves, and slaughterhouses. Williams downplays the sinister connotations of these locations and says they were picked for "acoustics".
The influence of Williams's work on subsequent artists has led critics to call him "a reluctant pioneer of the dark ambient genre who regards his music as neither dark nor ambient".