Love in Exile—Aftab’s new album in collaboration with pianist and jazz composer  https://pitchfork.com/artists/2132-vijay-iyer/" rel="nofollow - Vijay Iyer  and multi-instrumentalist  https://pitchfork.com/artists/shahzad-ismaily/" rel="nofollow - Shahzad Ismaily —takes that process of distillation even further: coaxing an entire album’s worth of pathos out of a handful of Urdu couplets, crafting complex emotional inner worlds through the ritualistic repetition of just a few lines of poetry. In Ismaily and Iyer, she has found the perfect partners. All three draw from a shared vocabulary that is subtle, intricate, and minimalist, yet incredibly expressive.  

Recorded live in a New York studio and released with minimal editing, the album’s six tracks retain the unhurried, conversational feel of improvisation, but without any of improv’s attendant looseness. Iyer’s intricate piano phrases and Ismaily’s pulsing bass and drones move in intuitive cycles, with textures and melodies slowly coalescing out of the interplay between their instruments. Aftab’s powerful voice fits seamlessly into these soundscapes, melancholy melismas languidly unfurling like ink dropped into water. At moments—when Iyer’s piano melody weaves serpentine shapes around Aftab’s voice on “Sajni,” or Ismaily’s sepulchral Moog synth shares space with Iyer’s delicate topline on “Eye of the Endless”—their connection seems telepathic, three seasoned musicians breathing together as a single organism. 

This potent chemistry is on display from the opening moments. Synths shimmer like cosmic backwash at the outset of “To Remain/To Return,” occasionally interrupted by the portentous thump of a bass drone. Iyer begins with hesitant, stuttering notes, as if testing the waters, before finally settling into a sinuous piano phrase that loops and loops, subtly mutating as it repeats. Aftab joins three minutes in, her expansive voice slotting into the spaces left by the two instrumentalists. That first disconsolate “Jaa re” (“Go now”) sets the emotional tone for both the song and the record; her voice hints at deep reservoirs of sorrow, channeling centuries of South Asian cultural fascination with romantic tragedy.