An unusual melting pot

Courtesy of the Great White North by way of Vancouver, Delhi 2 Dublin boldly goes where no band has gone before—blending Bhangra and Celtic music with hip-hop and electronic influences. If your immediate reaction was, Huh? you wouldn’t be wrong. If your second reaction was to dismiss them, then you would. Delhi 2 Dublin’s experimental sound was born out of a complete accident, and has energized audiences across Canada and the U.S. west coast. Singer Sanjay Seran sat down with The Muse to discuss the band’s impromptu beginnings, their seemingly uncontrollable live energy and their upcoming date at The Middle East on May 4.

The MUSE: I’m really excited to talk about Delhi 2 Dublin’s hybrid of Celtic and Indian music. You must be the first band that I’ve heard of that fits that description.

Sanjay Seran: Yeah you read it and it can almost be like, “What the hell?” I think you have to listen to it to understand it. When you read about it you might think, “Oh my God, this is going to be a mess. This is one of those total hippie bands that thinks this is going to be awesome.” But after all, they’re two of the heaviest drinking cultures on Earth.

TM: How did you guys get started, and where did the concept come from?

SS: The idea kind of grew out of necessity from the first time we played, which was at CelticFest in Vancouver in ’06. And Tarun in the band is a DJ; he spins Asian underground and electronica. The guy who commissioned it used to be the artistic director of the Vancouver Folk Festival, he was also involved with the Celtic music festival. He called and said we were going to DJ this night, and it’s also a Celtic festival. And Tarun was like, “Well, I don’t have any Irish electronic music.” So he was like, “Make it!”

So we decided to go with that. Tarun and one of the other DJs started producing a couple of tracks, and being that his background is in the Asian underground scene, that influence came right into the music. He worked with a violinist, and asked if they wanted to write a couple of tracks, and they did. And a week before, he called me up and was like, “This is what’s going on. There’s going to be Celtic dancers. There’s going to be this and that. Do you think you can throw something down on this track?” So I decided to try it. I went home and listened to his track.

There were actually two tracks that we played with not really any sort of structure. They were both pretty long. It was a 15 minute performance with dancers coming on, violinists, the two DJs and myself who came up for two minutes. The audiences went nuts for it, and it just grew out of that. There were enough important people in the audience that we just started getting booked for these little festivals. Then it grew to bigger and bigger festivals. And then a year later we were like, “Whoa. We’re a band.”

So that’s really what happened. We got these gigs, and we needed to make music for them. It was kind of a rush job at the beginning, so then we needed to put an album out. That’s when we really realized that we were a band. It was kind of better that way. If were just decided to put this idea together, just because we thought it would work, it probably never would have worked.

And we didn’t realize this at the time, but if you think about it, the gypsies from India all the way up through Europe to Ireland, the history is really there. There are early recordings of these two styles of music being recorded and combined. We had no clue about that, so I take no credit for that. We found out about that after.

TM: So you guys have really built an audience just by playing live. What elements do you bring to your live shows, and what are your crowds like?

SS: The crowd varies. It’s very, very diverse. That sounds like something anyone else would say, that we mesh with a wide range of people, but it really is. It’s weird. We see anything from 20-year-old kids to old school hippies all just ripping it up. Then we’ll play certain club shows and we’ll see the first few rows all 20 to 22-year-old white girls. Then we’ll go to another city and it will be a majority of Indian people. There’s a mix.

In terms of a connection, our energy is crazy. We’re one of those bands that are having trouble really capturing our live energy on our records. We haven’t quite nailed it yet. We’re working on it, and getting better and better. We are one of those bands. One day we’ll be able to capture that on an album, and then we can retire.

TM: So expanding on that, can you talk a little about your band mates and the dynamic you guys have?

SS: I’ve never seen it like this, but this question makes me think about it like this. The way we interact on stage is kind of like how we do our songwriting. It makes sense in my head because we all do our own thing. And then there are lots of little bits where we interact with each other, and the people who interact are always different. That’s kind of how the songs come out. There will be times that Andrew will come up with an idea, and I’ll be like, “Wicked, that sounds good.” Or T will come up with a beat, and I’ll work on it. And there are those interactions on stage where we’ll realize what works.

And T is in the back anchoring the whole thing with his electronics. He’ll cue us in. He makes all our beats, but the melody stuff comes from all our different members. It’s not like lead singer and lead guitarist get together and write everything. Or it’s not like Iron Maiden where the bass player does all the production and pre-production and writing all the songs in the studio, then they get together. It’s not like that with us. The ideas really do spawn from other people. That’s because we were all brought in from other projects, and this was a fun little side project. And we’ve worked together for so long, that it develops into this sound in the end. This came together because the name of the night when we first played was called “Delhi to Dublin.” So we just kept that title going.

TM: Your third album, Planet Electric, came out last year. What has the evolution of your band and its sound been like since the first album?

SS: That recording we had done, and we had noticed the difference in synergy between our live shows and our first album. Everyone kind of did their own bits on top of a beat. But now we realized we’re a band, so let’s try to write music and really capture the live energy as much as we can. That’s what was going on with Planet Electric. T and Ravi sat down across from each other and recorded all the percussion trying to play off each other. And then the rest of us recorded all our stuff together. So there was violin, guitar, vocals and sitar all going at once. That was the way we wanted to capture our live performance. We did better than our first album, but we’re still working on it.

Now, we’re working on new material for our next album, and our focus is to keep expanding that live energy, and also work on our songwriting. We really feel that’s the weakest part of us. Really, really focus on our main ideas and simplify so there’s not so much going on at once. Stay away from that wall of sound so we can focus on the key elements, the catchiest parts, and develop that. We have a couple of weeks off in May when we come back and we’re going to start writing. We just came out with a remix album in Canada. That just came out today. It hasn’t been released in the states yet, but we’re working on that.

TM: You’ll be playing the Middle East, and there are two very large Irish and Indian populations in Boston. Do you have any special plans for that show?

SS: We’re using this run to practice new material from our remix album. There’s going to be a lot of new beats that will be heard because we’re coming back at the end of this to play two CD release parties. So we’re going to incorporate some of the remixes. There’s going to be a lot of hype and excitement. We’re coming to Boston, then Vancouver for the CD release parties, so it seems like everything has been leading up to this climax of going on tour and then finishing at home. We’ve never done that before. By the time we get to Boston, the set will be all tweaked out and smooth. And we just like being in Boston. We were there in October, and it’s just wicked. Whenever we play the big cities, we’re like little kids all starry-eyed.

TM: What are your plans for the foreseeable future as far as recording, touring, material?

SS: We’ll probably go into the studio in the fall to release a new album in Canada in the spring around this time. We don’t know how it will go, but it would be nice to release the album in Canada and the U.S. at the same time. It’s a lot of work, but that would be cool. Over the summer, our schedule is booked. Summertime is a fun festival time. A lot of crazy traveling. We’re hitting Europe for the first time. No show in Dublin yet, but we’re working on it. We’re playing an Indian Mela festival in Belfast which is going to be wicked. Then we’re playing in Birmingham, England the day before that for another festival. So that’s our first time in Europe besides being a showcase. We’ve done Germany once.

A lot more U.S. festival plays this summer. It’s becoming a lot more spread out from the upper west corner and the west coast. We’re playing Wakarusa in Arkansas, which is cool. It’s looking up and up. It’s really fun getting to play more main stage type events. Wakarusa, we’re the small band. There’s some huge names there. And looking at the lineup, we’re going to be such a small little pea in this giant festival. That’s cool because we want to play them all. We want to play Coachella and Bonnaroo. It’s a stepping stone. Here’s one, and we want to work our way up the lineup.

Delhi 2 Dublin plays The Middle East Upstairs on May 4 at 8 p.m. with Copal featuring Vadalna and Brian Carpenter & The Confessions. Check out their website at delhi2dublin.com.