Dirgahayu is Back!

September 20, 2020 by Alvin Sim
dirgahayu malaysia rock mathrock instrumentalrock seikan zulhezan tiongfaizal afifi wanazry thewknd

Dirgahayu, Malaysia’s instrumental rock group, has just announced their new song on Malaysia Day (16 September, 2020), Ilhak.

Although many would say Dirgahayu is a math rock group, but as Zulhezan highlighted in the interview on the Wknd Sessions, Dirgahayu is an instrumental rock group 1. They began as a trio in 2013 with Zulhezan, Afifi Rahim and Wan Azry and Seikan Sawaki joined in 2014 as the fourth member 2. With Seikan on the drums, Zul is able to focus on the guitar.

It wasn’t until I watched LIVE // Dirgahayu Farewell Show di ATAS / Seikan Sawaki’s Departure - Part 1, that I realised Seikan left the group to return to Japan. It was an emotional performance, for sure, and it’s sad to see Dirgahayu without Seikan on the drums. Following that, and as I also got to know when writing this, Zul left the group in 2018 3. No wonder there were no news about the group since then. Even their website is no longer available. The one I have linked here is the one I found in archive.org.

On July this year, Dirgahayu announced their new member, @tiong.faizal 4, and now they are comprise of Afifi, Tiong and Wan Azry, as listed on their bandcamp page.

Knowing this and listening to their songs on their Commemorate! album and Ilkhak again, and I can’t help to feel that Ilhak does sounds different. Still a good song, nevertheless, and a good start for a new chapter for the group.

With the new member and song, lets hope that they come up with more good materials.

Below is the performance they did on The Wknd (around 2015) with three of my favourite Dirgahayu songs – 几 / 十 六 (Kyu / Ju Roku), Istinggar and Volumetric. Although it’s old, but still it’s the best one I could find on YouTube thanks to The Wknd team for the amazing audio and video.

If you like this article, do like, share, leave a comment and subscribe (to the RSS feed). Don’t forget to follow Dirgahayu on their social media for updated news and support them by sharing their music, watch their gig when they are in town and buy their merchandises.

Updated 2020-09-22: Added Amazon Music and Apple Music links.

More about Dirgahayu

References

  1. YouTube – Dirgahayu Interview Exclusive on The Wknd Sessions, #94 ↩

  2. The Wknd – 5 Questions: Dirgahayu (from archive.org) ↩

  3. NME – Dirgahayu end hiatus with new single ‘ILHAK’ ↩

  4. Facebook: Dirgahayu annoucing their new drummer, @tiong.faizal ↩

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