Kat Harlton
Vancouver based ensemble Delhi 2 Dublin, are back with the release of their latest studio album We Got This (May 17, 2019 via Inside Pocket / Warner Music Canada). The album, produced by Toronto-based hitmaker Gavin Brown (Barenaked Ladies, Metric, Tragically Hip), offers a unique blend of energetic-pop melodies with the electronic pulse of warehouse raves, bringing a positive, colourful feeling to the socially aware messages expressed throughout.
Original member Tarun Nayar co-founded Beats Without Borders, one of the first Canadian West Coast electronic outfits to throw big parties that incorporated various non-Western musical styles and traditions. When asked about musical influences, and how he’d describe the band’s sound, he terms it “sub-contiental pop”. Sharing that one of the big influences in their lives is South Asian music. “One big influence is Indian music, and we also sample stuff from the seventies and sample bits and pieces from older records,that sort of thing. We really want to bring that Indian vibe into the pop music that we’re making now. When we first started it was very underground, very electronic. As we became a band, we became better and better songwriters and then you get to a certain point where you realize to reach the largest amount of people, you need to get to a platform that’s accessible, whether you call that pop music or catchy hook stuff. So our paths have definitely changed over the years.”
Vocalist Sanjay Seran agrees the band’s songwriting has changed over the years, “We used to try to get together in our rehearsal space and jam, or I was sitting around making beats and then sending them to Tarun and wait for him to do something. This past album we really kind of wrote it like a pop album, where we wrote the songs first and worked really closely with Gavin Brown and others from our record label. We even did this amazing exercise which I think helped us, where we kind of wrote down ten or fifteen titles for songs that we wanted to write and then we wrote the songs. For some of the songs it really helped us figure out what this album is about, what were some of the themes we wanted to speak about. We’ve never actually taken that approach before, and we probably wrote like fifty songs.”
Having performed at multiple festivals including Glastonbury and Burning Man, Tarun says festivals like CMW open up opportunities for artists, “These really are social, networking events, where we end up meeting people without any intention. We just go in with a chill attitude, and I found it’s organic and it just happens where you click with people when you meet, which I think is the best part about this.”
For more on Delhi 2 Dublin including summer tour dates, visit: https://www.delhi2dublin.com