• This Month In Irish Music: June

    July 5, 2019 - By 

    Was June the strongest month in Irish music this year so far? By way of Girl Band, Yankari, Uly, Roisin Murphy and more, Colin Gannon makes a strong case in his monthly round-up. Girl Band — Shoulderblades Girl Band (pictured) are back. Dara Kiely’s ungodly, contorted howl is back, as exorcistic and scabbed as ever. In the same month that Two Door Cinema Club made their excruciatingly ghastly comeback, Ireland’s revered purveyors of shadowy, techno-informed noise rock arose from their slumber. Kiely’s health problems led at least in part to their lack of visibility over the past few years, creating a…

  • Watch: Yankari – Change Your Ways (Mago Mago)

    June 25, 2019 - By 

    Far be it from us to make a sweeping statement, but no one – and we repeat: no one – in Ireland can hold a live audience captive to rhythm quite like Afrobeat collective Yankari. We played their 2017 single ‘Enyimba‘ to death, and at last they’re back with ‘Change Your Ways (Mago Mago)’, the first single taken from their debut album, set for release through Hipdrop Records later this year. Masterful in their updating and expanding of Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat, the band offset its infectious groove with loaded cultural symbolism; the band sought out kids from Dublin’s inner city to sing Mago Mago’s…

  • Premiere: Yankari – Enyimba

    December 1, 2017 - By 

    And now for something completely different. We’re delighted to present a first listen to ‘Enyimba’, the sublime new single from Dublin-based band Yankari. A collective luminously bearing the imprint of their main influence of the legendary Fela Kuti, the band “aspire to advance the original Afrobeat genre by incorporating contemporary sounds, such as, jazz, funk, dance, rock-and-roll whilst keeping the traditional groove elements of Afrobeat.” Nowhere is that more on display than ‘Enyimba’, a six-minute burst of beatific, masterfully-layered Afrobeat incorporating guitar, bass, percussion, brass, keys, vocals and more. The track’s title stems from “Enyimba enii” meaning ‘the elephant is coming’ a traditional…

  • Shooting From The Hip: Meet Dublin’s Hipdrop Records

    September 1, 2016 - By 

    Hipdrop Records is a new Dublin label championing the often overlooked but always exciting sounds of Ireland’s funk, afrobeat and world music artists. With an obscenely talented opening camp of musicians and years hustling in event organisation we talked to co-founder Keith Fennell about changing the record, fun and family. Words by Eoghain Meakin. Photos by Lucy Foster. So what is Hipdrop records? How did it come about? Hipdrop Records is an independent label for Funk, Soul and World music setup by me and my long term business realist, Dan Whelan. The ethos of the label is in the name…