The ultimate mish-mash of musical mosaics

By Kate Black, The Gateway (CUP)

Edmonton (CUP) — On the road from Quebec City to Peterborough, Ontario, Delhi 2 Dublin’s Tarun Nayar is working on a mixtape of everyone the band has toured with in the last year. He may not realize it, but his activity draws a perfect metaphor for the band.

Like a mixtape, Delhi 2 Dublin draws inspiration from a mosaic of shared experiences, blending sounds from different cultures into a creation that’s energetic and fresh, reminiscent of travel stories and late-night anecdotes.

Founded after a one-off performance in Vancouver, the band emerged as a unique hybrid of Celtic and East-Asian sound with an electronic party vibe. With most of the band growing up on the West Coast, excepting himself and one other band member, Nayar explains there are few places this musical mish-mash could work.

“There’s something very special about Vancouver after growing up in Montreal,” he says. “Even going back to the East Coast now, they don’t really get us. Whereas in Vancouver, people got us literally from the very start, from the first moment we started playing. People understood.”

“And that mentality also carries through all the way down the West Coast to Northern California for sure. We get on stage there, and people have never seen us before, and they just go apeshit.”

[pullquote] “Even going back to the East Coast now, they don’t really get us. Whereas in Vancouver, people got us literally from the very start, from the first moment we started playing. People understood.”[/pullquote]

Confirming that the lifestyle and energy manifested in California was a major influence on their latest album Turn Up the Stereo, Nayar explains that Delhi 2 Dublin pulls inspiration from their tours by amping up their songwriting and the electronic aspect of their music. Most recently, the band returned from an international tour that landed them in Bali, where a lot of “fine tuning and tweaking” of the album took place. He adds that the final song, “Bali High”, features samples from the trip, inspired by nights of partying in Asia.

Despite their wealth of touring experience and the obvious blending of cultural sounds in their music, Delhi 2 Dublin hasn’t been labeled as world music by the college charts for the first time in their career. Nayar explains that they’re focusing more on creating a party atmosphere than conforming to a particular genre.

“I don’t know what god figure decides what’s electronic and what’s world, but for us, it’s kind of all the same,” Nayar says. “I kind of think it’s a dated term, but I don’t get angry if people call us world music. It’s like, whatever, if that’s what they want to call us, that’s what it is, but we don’t really think of ourselves as making any kind of traditional music. We just kind of make party music that we like, and it just so happens that some of the instruments are different.”

Delhi 2 Dublin identifies as a group that reaches out to other cultures to create something distinctly their own. After recently posting an open call on their blog for “freaks and weirdos” for their new music video, Nayar jokes that eccentrics — even the weirdos — are key to keeping things original.

“Because we all are [weirdos], really,” he laughs. “Maybe you a little bit more than me, but definitely everyone is.”