The Brooklyn-based Pakistani singer enthuses Tokyo’s hipster class with a jazz infused set, and whisky.

“I like to bribe my audience” Arooj Aftab jokes as she apologises for a hangover and offers her audience shots of whisky, “it’s my first time here and I don’t know if I’ll be invited back”. A laugh comes back from the all-seated room, half directed at Aftab’s self-effacement and half surely at the notion that her first visit to Tokyo will be her last.

For an artist who has received a Grammy nomination every year since her haunting, smoke filled single ‘Mohabbat’ won the award for Best Global Music Performance in 2021, a first booking in Tokyo feels like a low stakes milestone to hit. The audience, which is relaxed and polite, seems to reflect this. But Aftab and her band show their intent with a set that infuses the intimate plucked violins and arpeggiated guitars of her records with warm grooves, jazz rhythms and guitar parts that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Tinariwen set.

On record, Aftab’s music is notable for its minimalist approach to instrumentation. Her voice, full of wistful longing, finds itself spilling into the cracks left by sparse arrangements of bar room piano, dreamy harp and ripples of finger-picked folk. Tonight, songs like ‘Suroor’ give way to indulgent double bass while ‘Whisky’ and ‘Baghon Main’ hold a bubbling groove before closing out with crisp guitar solos.

Aftab’s supporting cast help to make the night, indeed one of the loudest rounds of the evening’s applause go towards Ichika Aoba who joins the stage to sing two mesmerising sopranos on ‘Baghon Main’ and ‘Last Night’. But it is Aftab’s spellbinding presence that holds the room. With subtle hand gestures she tames the exuberance of her bandmates and in doing so gives her rich voice the space to fall over the music like whisky hitting the rocks.

Self-effacement is clearly part of the act, too. Early in the set Aftab promises the audience “some songs that are fun and some that are depressing” and introduces the encore opener ‘Aey na balam’ as coming from an album “no one gave a shit about”. But it is the song that “everyone knows” that Aftab closes the set with. As she begins to sing ‘Mohabbat’ with a wistful longing, the curtains behind her open to reveal a sky view of one of Tokyo’s trendiest districts. The effect is to imagine a city removing the question of ‘if’ and replacing it with ‘when’ it will welcome this remarkable artist back.