Releasing an experimental album as a first offering is a brave move for an artist. It must be done under the assumption that what you believe to be good music will be well received by enough people to scramble together a fan base and that it will sell, either records or tickets. Dublin musician Hitman Lord, is ambitiously described as “soul, pop, rock and electronica with unique stylistic ingredients”.

Hitman Lord

The tracks are certainly unique. With a lot of albums claiming to belong to very different genres there’s a tendency to try and shoe horn in as much interesting stuff as possible. More cowbell, some keyboard effects here and there, and it’s an experimental album.

With Hitman Lord’s tracks however, we find that most of the exploration of the different genres was focused through his vocals. He has a distinctive ability to match his vocals to the mood and tone of a song, fluctuating between warm, melodic and unsettling and frantic wherever it is required.

Wanna Healing Music is the most recent single to be released from the album. It’s a colourful song with a chorus that sticks in your head. His debut single S.A.R was released in March 2009.

Hitman Lord has a very loyal fanbase, which is justified, but I don’t think we’ve seen the best of him yet, and it will be very interesting to see what the album in its entirety has to offer.

The singles, and the B-sides available on MySpace are just a small sample of what the album has to offer. The video for Wanna Healing Music is below.

The video, as it happens, was about the only thing I didn’t like about the song. Maybe it’s a personal thing, maybe I’m getting old, but I believe that truly good music should speak for itself. The video felt a bit pretentious and contrived, to the point where it really overshadowed the song. There’s a dangerous amount of editing effects crammed into the 4 minute 21 second slot and some, quite frankly, strange sequences which feel like he’s wandered into a Lady Gaga video.

It’s a good song, but where the video is concerned, sometimes less is more.

Drop-d Rating: 7/10

Hitman Lord Myspace