c/o Spotify

No land in sight, no place to hide. Siren Islands, a 2018 album by Arooj Aftab, a 37-year-old Pakistani singer based in the United States since 2005, is a journey of no return. After travel, one is no longer the same. Like a pearl inside an oyster, this dreamy and transformative music is a treasure hidden in a mythological world. Siren Islands is part of a musical exploration that Aftab herself considers a detour album. Both Under the Water (2014) and Vulture Prince (2021), Aftab’s first and most recent albums, have a very different spirit. Despite this, the beauty of Siren Islands is in its spontaneous nature. Aftab’s versatility and creative capacity outline a personal metamorphosis that leads us to a sonorous adventure that can generate altered states of consciousness.

Siren Islands is a dreamlike place where long soft sounds happen, thereby distorting the land’s reality. As an important moment in Aftab’s career, Siren Islands is an experiment in ambient music, strongly connected to the video game-related work Aftab was doing at that time. Compared to her other albums, which evidently have more of an indie and folk music spirit, juxtaposed with Sufi poetry, Siren Islands is defined by the presence of Aftab’s voice, analog synths, digital looping, and reverb-layered guitar sounds. 

Deep in the waters of the album, Aftab’s voice revisits Greek mythology with Urdu lyricism. She creates an enthralling soundscape experimenting with modular synthesizers, fizzy guitar sounds, and reverb chants. The loop tracks of her voice are in Urdu, one of the languages in which Sufi Poetry was written. Although words are deliberately blurred, the word “saanse,” meaning breathes, can be discerned.

Presumably referring to the three sirens’ islands, the first three tracks are named “Island N°1,” “Island N°2,” and “Island N°3.” However, it is the name of the fourth track that unveils the truth behind this album: “Ovid’s Metamorphoses.” Named after a mythological poem by the Roman poet Ovid, this track reveals the spectral side of Aftab’s music. Building on the myth of the transformation of the goddess Persephone’s human companions, the sirens in these islands and, particularly, in Aftab’s album, embrace a mystical and feminine power that turns a misogynistic myth around and opens a space for imagining different realities and fictions. 

Aftab chooses sirens as the mythological creature to shape the listener’s thoughts, visions, and impressions. Within the first 10 seconds of the album, sunk into the breath of a siren, I was completely swept away. I realized, like an omen, that this was like jumping into the void, but one very different from the place where sailors meet their bitter fate. Instead, I found light at the end of the tunnel, a sister’s call, like a personal revelation of sorority. This luminescent feeling is the hidden treasure of this album.  Despite the fact that men have demonized sirens throughout history as femmes fatales, the strength of these female creatures is deeply rooted in their sense of community and loyalty to each other. 

The album art, done by the Brooklyn-based artist Caledonia Curry, reflects the power of mythical transformation. The portrait on the cover shows a woman’s metamorphosis into a creature. Without adding anything that is not evident to an attentive or unprepared listener, sirens are the voice and the image of this album. But, perhaps even more intriguing, the album Siren Islands could itself be a devotional song celebrating the artist’s own process. After all, it has been her personal metamorphosis that won her this year’s Grammy for Best Global Music Performance for “Mohabbat” (Urdu for love), a song from Vulture Prince.

Aftab could be the water, but also the sand, an animal, a siren, a myth, or a thousand women in one. It is true that this artist is not the only one creating from a seascape and a siren vibe; singers like Úyanga Bold and Aeralie Brighton have had similar aspirations in the context of the video game and soundtrack industry. But such is the power of Aftab’s voice that it is impossible to go against her oceanic currents. Siren Islands envelops the listener like a wave and sweeps you away. There’s no choice but to let go.

 Y. Alejandra Martínez-Rico can be reached at ymartinezric@wesleyan.edu