IN CONCERT
Delhi 2 Dublin
When: Friday 9 p.m. (doors at 8)
Where: Sugar
Tickets: $20 at Lyle's Place, Ditch Records and ticketweb.ca
It's difficult for any group to capture the energy of a live show while sequestered in a studio space.
But for Delhi 2 Dublin singer Sanjay Seran and his Vancouver bandmates - fiddler Sara Fitzpatrick, guitarist Andrew Kim, tabla player Tarun Nayar and dhol player Ravi Binning - distilling their unique blend of Celtic fiddle and Bhangra beats for an album was nearly impossible.
"The albums in the past were a great souvenir to pick up at a live show," Seran said.
"The structure of the songs and the arrangements on our albums came out of the way the live set flowed. And that worked for [live shows], but they weren't really good songs. We had good ideas but they weren't executed fully."
Seran believes his band finally righted itself with Turn Up the Stereo, which arrived in August.
After years of hard touring, which helped make the group a strong concert draw, members of Delhi 2 Dublin wanted to offer something truly memorable on a recording.
The creation of Turn Up the Stereo was a result of that unified effort, according to Seran.
"What happened quite recently, and for the first time, is that we've stepped our game up. And that's really due to the fact we are performing songs off the new album, which are real songs, and we are doing them in the way that we do them live. I finally feel like we've stepped it up a notch."
The group had the ears of audiences from the jump - the idea of blending Celtic fiddles and electronic beats with sitars and tabla was novel, to say the least. But after the newness wore off, the band found itself stranded at a crossroads, Seran said.
"I haven't felt it recently, but there used to be this feeling that we were a novelty act. I loved the fact that we were kind of novel, because it allowed us to get somewhere. But I'm forward to the future."
Delhi 2 Dublin made substantial inroads in the U.S. and Europe in 2012, and has committed to additional tours in those markets in 2013.
In the past, the group spent most of its time in Canada, in hopes of building a solid foundation. That eventually happened, but it came at a cost.
The frenetic five-piece changed not only where but also how it tours this year. Happy with the results, Seran said the band will narrow its focus even more.
"We pushed ourselves to a limit that we couldn't sustain. We were going too much, too hard and our schedules were crazy. Next year will be more intense touring, followed by a month to six weeks off."
No matter how big it becomes, Delhi 2 Dublin will always have time for Vancouver Island, Seran said. The band - which plays tonight in Nanaimo at the Queen's Hotel, Friday in Victoria at Sugar and Saturday in Courtenay at the Bridge Lounge - owes a deep debt to local audiences, who were among the first to embrace Delhi 2 Dublin's Celtic-Punjabi electronica.
Vig Schulman of Cumberland's popular Big Time Out festival, which hosted the group in 2008 and 2009, was one of the earliest supporters, Seran said.
But other promoters and clubs in Victoria were no less integral to the band's development, he added.
"We've been with Vancouver Island since the beginning. The whole grassroots buildup of Delhi 2 Dublin, a big reason for that was all the cities we played on the Island.
Everything we were doing in Vancouver we were doing over there as well."
While members have come and gone over the years - Victoria fiddler Kytami left in 2010 after five years with the group - Delhi 2 Dublin is stronger than ever. Seran describes the band's current mindset as strong, the result of "a rebirth" that saw this one-time musical collaboration evolve into something much more meaningful for its members.
"This is our life, our career. It is a serious machine now," Seran said.
"There's five people on board who are really focused on the same goal. Yeah, we wane here and there, but there's this really nice spiritual feeling when you're working toward a goal together, to be in the same boat with these other people who are fully sacrificing things to reach these goals."
