While Mumbai is the capital of India's popular music-driven by movie soundtracks-many of the most interesting electronic hybrids come from elsewhere. Karsh Kale's home cit of Chennai has become a hotspot and Chennai's Earthsync label is behind this release from Kartik and Gotam. Appropriately in this hybrid world, the two are actually Israeli, but they spent a lot of time in South India helping out after the Tsunami and kept coming back.

The title, Business Class Refugees, has two meanings. In one sense it's the mashing and stirring of multiple cultures that leads to new combinations of sounds and beats. The literal meaning is from when the pair got stuck in a business class lounge at the Singapore airport waiting for a visa and used the opportunity to get to work on their laptops, using sound files they already had recorded. What came out in the end is an album of intriguing songs that are more than just collections of Hindi vocals over routine dance floor beats.

The Indian heritage is clear, on most songs, but here trombones accompany tablas and an accordion and sitar back up chants from Tajikstan on "Boye Boye." Importantly, most of the tracks come off as real songs, with elements like choruses, bridges, and solos. There's not a lot of track-lengthening fluff that so often gets tiresome over the course of a whole album.

This is Indian-based music first, international electronica second, which elevates it above much of the global mash-up music coming out every month. For those looking for more than an exotic vocalist on top of western beats, this is a full album collection of ear-opening and often surprising tracks.