Grammy winner Arooj Aftab drops latest album 'Love In Exile'

The first-ever Pakistani to secure the coveted Grammy Award, Arooj Aftab, is excelling in her career with yet another music album to add more to her already illustrious discography.

Aftab's latest offering will be a collaboration between American jazz pianist Vijay Iyer, Aftab herself, and a bassist-cum-Moog synthesist Shahzad Ismaily. The trio will also be touring across states for their diehard fans.

The trio was initially formed in 2018 and is now gearing up to bless its fans with melodious and catchy songs. The Udhero Na crooner took to Instagram to announce her latest album, titled Love In Exile, on February 23. 

Aftab captioned the post, "Wow this record is finally in the world. A journey in listening and trust, innovation and exploration, new stuff with ancestral touches, LOVE IN EXILE is the high art album of my dreams. Made in collaboration with very elevated beings Vijay Iyer and Shahzad Ismaily, I feel like a grown up now. Streaming everywhere, the vinyl is also beautiful you should get it. And we’re starting our tour! Swipe for dates"

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Discussing, reminiscing, and revealing their motives, plans, and ambitions behind their collaboration, the Mohabbat singer recalled collaborating with “very elevated beings; Iyer and Ismaily” for it, and expressed feeling all grown up. “Streaming everywhere, the vinyl is also beautiful you should get it. And we’re starting our tour! Swipe for dates,” she added.

Upon the Recording Academy's curiousity whether the trio's collaborative catalog is entirely improvised, pianist and Harvard professor Iyer detailed, “I don't even think that 'improvisation' is the right word for it, because it's actually just co-composition in real-time. It's not taking solos or something. It's really like, okay, well, this is what the song is. Whatever's happening now, this is the song. So, what should happen next in the song?”

The Rolling Stone’s Brenna Ehrlich best describes Love In Exile as “more akin to visiting some sort of beautiful, strange sonic landscape made from strings, keys, and breath.”

As per The Guardian, the album witnesses the 38-year-old “balancing her melismatic voice between entirely percussion-less, almost ambient soundscapes.” 

Reminiscing how she met Viajy, Aftab exclaimed, “I met Vijay at Merkin Hall in New York. I was invited to play a set before his set. He was doing this special collab. I knew Vijay and his music from before, and I had always been like, ‘Wow, this guy, he is amazing.’ So, meeting him, I was a little intimidated. May not intimidated, but definitely like, ‘Oh s—, it's Vijay.’ But we did a little collab that night — just an improv thing — and it felt really great. I was so surprised that it was so easy and so beautiful and so musical. You don't expect that just happening, you know? You have to work hard to find that sort of musical collaborator. And Shahzad, I had been [asked] lots here and there in New York, ‘Hey, do you know Shahzad?’”

Talking about her love and enthusiasm whilst producing a song in the studio, Aftab shared, “The approach is to pretend to be an instrument, to whatever extent that is possible as a vocalist. You need vowels and stuff, and you need words to really get things going. Sometimes, the words are the instrument too. They're actually the keys sometimes. So, I had fragments of poetry. Some of it's from Vulture Prince. Some of it's from Bird Under Water and some of it is completely new stuff. But I chose it based on the mood of where I thought the songs were going musically. It's not meant to be the song. It's not meant to tell the story. I think I wanted the three of us to be telling the story — not just me, the singer.” 

On the professional front, Aftab had been nominated for the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 2022, winning the Grammy Award for Best Global Music Performance in 2022, and Pride of Performance in 2022. Her recent albums include Siren Islands (2018), and Vulture Prince (2021).