The X Collective: Marking the spot for a new wave of Irish sounds
One of the real ‘stories’ of Irish music in the last decade or so has been the rise of collectives, groups of artists and creatives pooling skills and abilities with common cause. From the much-missed Richter Collective’s DIY advancement of heavier, more awkward noises in the late noughties, to the current international renown of Dublin’s Soft Boy Records, collaboration has been the way forward for many Irish acts and artists working on the independent level.
Enter Dublin’s X Collective, announcing its existence a fortnight ago as a new platform for artists, producers and facilitators, in a radically changed post-Covid environment.
With the input of over seventy members from across the soul, funk, reggae and hip-hop genres, it’s undoubtedly an ambitious endeavour, but one rooted in the spirit of breaking down barriers, says co-founder and Oiche Events promoter Emily Shaw.
“I’ve been putting on gigs with independent funk, soul and world artists for the last few years. I did a gig with (singer and X Collective co-founder) ZAPHO and Tolü Makay. Tolü just wanted to collaborate with others, and she was asking, ‘How do I break into this alternative scene? It seems really hard, very clique-y.’
"We were sitting for a cup of coffee, and my thoughts were ‘if you can’t pierce this scene, maybe you have to make your own.’”
At the cutting edge of new Irish music lies Cork-based neo-soul five-piece Shookrah, combining propulsive, progressive soul grooves and irresistible pop nous with keenly-articulate personal and social commentary. For vocalist Senita Appiakorang, the promise of a new way of doing things hit home.
“They told me what they were hoping to do, and latched onto it, because I’ve seen similar models work for artists like us, where different sounds and feels had room to cross over with one another, and had a further reach and artistic bandwidth.”
A central and declared tenet of the collective is one of inclusivity, looking to create art and music on a platform that helps meet the challenges of young people in Ireland - identity, sexuality, gender, the housing crisis and Direct Provision among them. Appiakorang discusses the group’s mission statement.
“I think it’s dope, that it’s not contrived, we have a vision to create a platform that speaks to music we love, and speaks to our pursuits. It’s less of a tagline that creates a forced mission statement, and more encapsulates what each artist is, or is doing naturally, and that’s what had appealed to us - the commitment is down to what each member wants to gain individually and as a collective.
"We’re artists of a wide diaspora and identities, and we speak to people that want to listen to that storytelling.”
New sounds have emerged from Ireland’s broader alternative scene in the past decade: a grá for boom-bap beats and skratchology on the island’s west coast has evolved into a hard-hitting, multicultural community led by the likes of the PX Music crew, God Knows and Denise Chaila; the midlands is an unlikely host to the bleeding edge of the drill subgenre, while Dublin’s community has produced bona-fide stars like Rejjie Snow, Mango & Mathman, Jafaris and Kojaque.
Appiakorang talks about the X Collective’s potential place amid this continuing evolution.
“We’ll take it toward people gaining from collaboration and cross-pollination. It’s not so much a label or a closed-off collective, yet, but I feel like it’s going to be more of an institution, like First Music Contact, with a focus on the day-to-day of creative, and what artists are doing, finding the right pieces. Creating opportunities, sharing best practices and getting to know each other.”
The last decade has been a time of profound social and cultural change, at a pace that the fallout from Covid-19 may very well accelerate as the musical infrastructure is sorely tested and consumption changes dramatically. It’s against this backdrop that Shaw sets out her expectations for the collective.
“Being able to utilise our time while we can’t do some of the things that we’d hoped for, our alternative is that all artists within the collective have a voice, and are able to speak on those topics, what’s important to them. Giving those ideas a platform. Our first release, ‘Collide’, was recorded in isolation, between Berlin and Ireland, no-one was in the same room, so that’s a prototype for how this can work, and how this can be a predominantly online platform for artists.”
X-pecting big things
Shookrah
Exercising the listener’s gray matter as vigorously as the listener’s hips, Cork-based neosoul five-piece Shookrah offer a futuristic, idiosyncratic take on genre tropes, with a firm lyrical focus on the personal, social and political. Their self-titled debut album is as definitive a statement as possible - ‘Don’t Wanna Doubt You’ lays out the matter of consent in indisputable terms, while ‘Notions’ addresses past loves and life lessons.
Tolü Makay
A vocalist at the heart of the X Collective, whose thoughts on the nature of the Irish music establishment gave rise to its creation. Born in Nigeria, reared in Offaly and based in Dublin, Makay’s brand of alt-soul wears the influence of Erykah Badu, Nina Simone, Sabrina Claudio, and Jhene Aiko on its sleeve.
ZAPHO
The nom-de-plume of Rathfarnham singer-songwriter and producer Ele Breslin, co-founder of the X Collective. With a defined line in soul-inflected electro-pop, Breslin has made in-roads in Irish music in recent years along with her live seven-piece, with early singles garnering adoring glances from corners of Irish music media and propelling her to festival stages last summer.
Toshín
A funk and soul eight-piece fronted by vocalist Tosin Bankole, Toshín draw influence from the like of Tank and the Bangas, James Brown and Aretha Franklin, with early singles endearing them to an emergent crowd in Dublin and recent single ‘Get Your Life’ seeing the band take on a national run of dates.
Shiv
Having impressed throughout 2019 with a trio of well-received singles, 2020 looked set to be a big year, pre-crisis, for Dublin vocalist Shiv, including a reworking of early single ‘Golden’ boasting a feature from emergent MC/Dublin hardcore punk survivor Nealo. Tipped by much of the Irish music blogosphere as ‘one to watch’, and with good reason.
