Delhi 2 Dublin

Back in 2006 we threw our Toronto Festival installment at the El Mocambo - its an interesting space that has, despite seeing better days in terms of decor, a decent sound-system and concrete floors; our gig ended up being a pretty chilled-out affair and afterward I was curious as to how it would feel with a band on stage who played loud and large... that is to say I was curious until I saw Delhi 2 Dublin tear the place up a couple of weeks ago!

Despite having worked with Tarun from D2D in the past (he's got a couple tracks available for download in our store and is also a member of our community), I had never seen the band perform and wasn't sure what to expect; outside of hearing an infectious meld of celtic and panjabi music.  When I stopped by the venue before the show to check in and say hello I was pleasantly surprised to find that Dave Sharma (aka Sharmaji - check his podcast episode & Jawani tune for download) was touring with them, packing big heat by way of his dhol drum.  That's when I really got excited; in my mathbook live dhol = a good [loud] time.

The show was part of an Eastern Canadian tour to promote their self-titled debut CD (produced by Adam Sheik) and the live set was pretty much a run-through of 10 tracks from the album.  Balanced with wafty effected violins and triggered synth samples, sitar stabs danced on driving dhol atop electronically arranged percussion to exciting effect.

Not only was the music which they played danceable, but their professional showmanship made the experience uniquely motivating. Each player obviously intimately familiar with their music and used that confidence to feed off the others on stage; riffing at opportune moments and dancing about as they played.

Perhaps as early as the second song in their set the entire audience had compressed around the stage and were thoroughly engrossed; watching and dancing along to D2D's antics whether they new the songs or not.  Ending too early with a couple of encore tracks, the show left me wanting more and I have yet to tire of filling the void with their album on repeat. 

* See more photos from the show on flickr.