<p><span><span>- Is there a worse genre name in existence than so-called "world music"? At best the term is hopelessly vague, at worst actually racist in the way we conjure infinitely expanding monikers for the limited stylistic variations of english-language popular music, but lump literally everything else into one basket.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>There was an idealism in the term to begin with, an attempt to broaden pop's frontiers and discover some of the amazing music being made around the planet. But as world music has grown into its own niche with its own labels, media and festivals; it has partitioned many artists off to an audience of highly cultured yuppies when they were meant to be filling dancefloors, coming out of bedroom speakers, inspiring idealistic dreamers.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>It is a welcome development then in recent years, with the appearance of label Music In Exile. It was started by the one-time Brisbane, now Melbourne based ultra-indie label Bedroom Suck. But where that label fills its roster with lo-fi folk artists and experimental weirdos, Music In Exile has a broad vision to release music from artists in Australia whose music has previously been deemed to belong to "someplace else".</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>There is a lot of wonderful talent on the books at Music In Exile, but one thing I really like is that it is getting attention in the same indie music world that a Bedroom Suck record would be - hipster bars, indie press and boutique festivals.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span><em>Exile At Home: Music in Isolation</em> is a sampler compilation of the Music In Exile roster, and it is a fun and varied trawl through artists of diverse styles who give the label a distinctive character if not uniform sound.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>The record opens with <strong>Mindy Meng Wang</strong>'s beautiful, harp-like, Chinese guzheng; then the rest of the album is artists from the African diaspora. There is the hip hop and pop-soul of <strong>DyspOra</strong> and <strong>Elsy Wameyo</strong>, the instrumental kora playing of <strong>Amadou Susou</strong> and the afrobeat of <strong>Ausecuma Beats</strong>. The Horn of Africa is represented by the autotune pop of <strong>Mulu Bekele</strong> and the more traditional wedding band sounds of <strong>Music Yared</strong>. The label's best known artist - blind Sudanese thom player <strong>Gordon Koang</strong> - appears twice, once in his usual style with repetitive dance number <em>South Sudan</em>, and once being remixed into a kind of minimal house dub by producer<strong> Liluzu</strong>.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>It's a varied mix then: of different instruments and styles, from different parts of the world, of traditionalists and innovators. Like the best label samplers, however, there is a cohesion that comes through it all, that represents the self-stated mission of Music in Exile to "create space for artists working in culturally or linguistically diverse communities in Australia."</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>For the country's indie music scene; <em>Exile at Home</em> is a very welcome invitation to venture beyond the confines of Western instrumentation and anglophone lyrics, to discover the amazing variety of music that is all around us.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>- Andy Paine.</span></span></p>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1316721538/size=large/bgcol=f…; seamless><a href="http://musicinexile.bandcamp.com/album/exile-at-home-music-in-isolation… at Home: Music in Isolation by Music in Exile</a></iframe>