Description
Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, Shahzad Ismaily – Love In Exile – Double Vinyl Record
Love in Exile is a hauntingly beautiful collaborative album by Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, and Shahzad Ismaily, released in March 2023 via Verve Records. This deeply atmospheric, improvisation-driven project brings together three world-class artists from different backgrounds, resulting in a genre-defying and emotionally immersive sonic journey. At its core, Love in Exile is an exploration of space, longing, and communion—both personal and musical.
From the very first moments of the album, listeners are drawn into a meditative soundscape shaped by Aftab’s ethereal Urdu vocals, Iyer’s fluid and intuitive piano work, and Ismaily’s rich, atmospheric electronics and bass. Unlike traditional albums that build from pre-composed songs, Love in Exile was born from live improvisational sessions where all three artists responded to each other in real time. This gives the album its distinctive organic feel: it flows like a river—quiet, vast, and deeply affecting—with moments of intensity and subtle release.
Arooj Aftab’s vocals are often sparse, using long, expressive phrases and melismatic ornamentation that draw from both classical South Asian traditions and ambient minimalism. Her voice doesn’t so much lead the music as weave through it, like a breeze through fog. Meanwhile, Vijay Iyer—long known for his genre-crossing work in jazz and contemporary composition—builds shimmering harmonic frameworks that elevate and echo her voice without overwhelming it. Shahzad Ismaily’s textures are both grounding and expansive, using synths, bass, and electronics to create layers that pulse gently, like breath or memory.
Tracks like “To Remain/To Return”, the album’s opening piece, slowly unfold over nearly 13 minutes, creating a space where silence and sound feel equally important. Another standout, “Shadow Forces,” builds tension with haunting vocal motifs and a slowly intensifying instrumental current that never quite breaks, embodying a kind of spiritual suspense. Each piece flows into the next with no hard edges—this is not an album of songs, but of meditative movements, where time seems suspended.
Love in Exile is also a powerful metaphor. All three artists, children of immigrant families, speak to themes of displacement, identity, and longing—not directly through lyrics, but through the emotional resonance of the music itself. There is an ache embedded in the album’s core, a sense of navigating the in-between: between cultures, languages, borders, and selves. It’s a musical statement about being together, in exile—creating beauty from separation and improvisation.
Critics have lauded Love in Exile for its rare combination of virtuosity, restraint, and emotional depth. It’s been described as “hypnotic,” “sublime,” and “transcendent,” and was widely praised upon release as one of the most compelling releases of 2023. It doesn’t conform to jazz, world, ambient, or classical categories, but it engages with all of them—offering something both timeless and of-the-moment.
If you’re drawn to contemplative, boundary-pushing music in the vein of ECM recordings, or if you appreciate artists like Nils Frahm, Alice Coltrane, or even Sigur Rós, Love in Exile is worth diving into. It’s not an album to play in the background—it asks for stillness and attention, and rewards it with something truly profound.
Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic
Track Listing
To Remain / To Return
Haseen Thi
Shadow Forces
Sajni
Eyes Of The Endless
Sharabi
