LorD and Master is musician, producer and songwriter, Daniel Graham. From the United Kingdom, he is a purveyor of SynthPop melodies with great pop sensibilities. His latest album, Dialogue, is no exception. A stunning collection of pop songs are found here.
From the opening bars of first track, Four Walls, we are drawn into a musical beauty with the very eighties sounds he chooses for his synthesizers. This opening track has a cool vocoder vocal. The robotic voice declares he should get out more, but the singer feels he can’t. This sense of entrapment flows throughout a lot of the album’s lyrical themes. I feel that the four-month lockdown in England, from March 2020 to July 2020, has had a great impact upon LorD and Master and his lyrics. However, this album is amazingly upbeat in it’s tone and sound.
LorD and Master manages a great balancing act with great style and panache that many can’t achieve. This balancing act is the great, British tradition of mixing positive, uplifting music with more sinister, less-happy lyrics. LorD and Master joins these two opposing feelings beautifully in a manner reminiscent of SynthPop giants, Pet Shop Boys.
The lead single, Silent Disco, is a celebration of club life in a very uplifting way. Many of the tracks on Dialogue have this cool, retro-but-modern feel to them. Once you reach the end of this album, you really want to listen again from the beginning. There is so much to discover on multiple listens as you fully appreciate the subtleties of LorD and Master’s synthesizer skills.
Dialogue is a brilliant album, and far more impressive than Pet Shop Boys’ most recent release. I recommend you check this out today and dive into SynthPop life.
Dialogue by LorD and Master is out now.