A biography for Rostam Batmanglijhasn’t been written yet.
“I can pass as a lot of things: people meet me and don't think I'm gay and speak about gay people in a certain way or they don't know I'm Middle Eastern and do the same.”
“There's a bunch of rules that I want to break. I have a rule-breaking streak.”
“I started playing guitar when I was 14.”
“I tend to use different microphones, different mic techniques, and different recording mediums - like analogue tape - that evoke multiple eras of recorded music at the same time.”
“There are rules that are so blatantly broken on 'Contra,' like structures of harmony and texture.”
“The original 'Don't Let It Get to You' started with a beat. The drums came first. All the musical and lyrical elements were written over those drums.”
“I think the music that speaks to me the most is music that is personal. And that's the music that I'm trying to make.”
“I've always been very good at helping other people finish their songs.”
“Honestly, I never felt like I wasn't an artist on my own. I always felt like the music I made was mine, whether it was part of a collaboration with people.”
“I don't think teenagers in 2017 identify with heterosexuality, and that's a positive.”
“I always want to be somewhat uncomfortable. But at the same time I want to make music that you react to viscerally.”
“I feel like there's no one kind of person who comes to my shows. Sometimes I've been surprised by the people who will stop me on the street to tell me that they're into my music.”
“I'd like to make an album with Slack one day. I'd like to use it as a collaborative tool. I know about it because I have friends that work in tech, and I guess you can use it in any job.”
“Well, the announcement to say that I was no longer a member of Vampire Weekend was something that was in the works for a long time. I knew that it was the right choice for me.”
“I feel like I've had this ability to infiltrate, as an outsider and an insider, different groups.”
“I'm very conscious of the fact that I devoted my life to recording music, recordings and writing songs.”
“In some ways, the more that I write songs, the more I feel that telling a story is the most important thing; just being able to close your eyes when you hear some lyrics and go somewhere.”
“When my mom was pregnant with me, my parents moved from France to America.”
“I'm always making beats, and when I can hear Ezra singing on one of them in my head, I send it to him. That's one of the ways that we've always worked together.”
“I like that I can write my name in Persian, and it's a small unit, like a graphical unit. I feel the same way about my name in English, it's a graphical unit.”