Vancouver based dance/ Celtic/ East Indian music collective Delhi 2 Dublin are bringing the party around the world with their unique blend of a variety of different musical styles including electronica, Celtic and East India dance music. They will be returning to Lethbridge to play Average Joes, Sept. 8 with special guest DJ Jason Freecity.
If you haven’t experienced Delhi 2 Dublin before at several Southern Alberta gigs including at South Country Fair a couple years ago or at their performances at Henotic and the Slice last year, Tarun Nayar said to expect an upbeat dance party featuring electronics, tabla, electric sitar, guitar, dhol and lots of fiddle playing.
“It’s a mix of Celtic and Pubjabi music with electromnica and dance elements,” Nayar described, who programs the beat into the computer as well as plays tabla in the band.
“ So there is a lot of East Indian music and a lot of electronica. And I have a soft spot for reggae music,” he said.
They just returned from a very successful tour of the United Kingdom.
“They got it. There definitely wasn’t a lot of head shaking. And we hit all five of the districts in the United Kingdom, the two Irelands, Wales, Scotland and England, ” he said.
And while none of the band members are actually from Ireland, both Nayar and fiddle player Sara Fitzpatrick have Irish roots, so they especially enjoyed the opportunity to explore them.
“ None of us had ever been to Ireland,” he said adding he was impressed, not only by how beautiful the country was, but how friendly the people were.
They are touring on a brand new EP as well as their latest CD “Planet Electric,” which features remixes of songs from their previous CD done by some of their favourite producers and musicians they have met during the course of their careers from electronical legend Gaudi to topical hipster Poirier to UK basedd drums n bass heads Shiva Soundsistem. Plus Canadian talent including DJ RSK aka sonicanimation (Rossland), Kashoo (Nelson) and Adham Shaikh (Nelson).
There is also a brand new track called “Give It Away”, the result of working with two great new fiddle players. The song is a departure for Delhi 2 Dublin and features big booming 808s (one of the first programmable drum machines), a string section and traditional Punjabi “Heer Ranjha” lyrics.
“It was a chance to get some of our favourite and most talented people we have met to take our songs and make some improvements to them,” he enthused.
“We’re excited about it. Every time we got one of the songs back, it was like a Christmas present for us to see their unique arrangements of them,” he continued.
“The arrangements were so fresh and so different, ” he said.
“ They’re really surprising, they always are when people remix them.”
He is looking forward to the show.
“It has been about a year since we were in Lethbriudge. And we have a lot of new music. We always like to have new music every time we play a show,” he said.
“In the live show, we definitely want to throw a party. Some nights we aren’t feeling our best but we try to bring it anyway,” he said.
Because the show has so many elements musically, it can be a challenge getting it right.
“ The biggest challenge is getting it right. There are so many ways things can go wrong. We’ve crashed and burned so many times,” he said.
“ We’ve had computer crashes and glitches, but we’ve never had the power go out on us. But if it does, we’re all musicians, so we can still play the music. It just doesn’t bang without the bass. We’ve learned. We travel with two laptops and backups
“One time we were playing and someone dropped pepper on the computer from two floors up and the computer crashed,” he suid adding the band continues to develop.
“It’s taken us five and a half years to bring it to this point.”
They live for the live show.
“It’s just the energy from the from the nerves. We hope people will come out,” he said.
Advance tickets for the show are $20 from Average Joes or $25 at the door.
