Rostam Batmanglij Quotes

• I think summer, at least as I've experienced it, can be joyous but it can also be tough emotionally. Physically, it can be hot to the point of being unbearable and I think you want to capture that frustration, but also the release.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Summer, Thinking, Frustration

  Source: www.elle.com

  6 Copy quote

• There's a line in the Arthur Russell documentary where his partner talks about how Arthur is really interested in process. He never felt like anything was finished, and he would even work on things after they'd been released. I definitely relate to that.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Arthur

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Obviously it always takes longer to finish an album than you think it will. That's always going to be the case. Everything takes longer than you think it will. Occasionally things happen fast.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Thinking, Things Happen

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

• I feel connected to every song on this record [ 'Modern Vampires Of The City' ], but yeah I think there's something special about 'Young Lion'. It's pretty different from any song that we've had before because the vocals are kind of between two different very simple instrumental piano melodies and it's almost like something that we call a vignette, it's sort of like a miniature.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Song, Simple, Thinking

  Source: www.coupdemainmagazine.com

  7 Copy quote

• I guess I have some kind of a visceral connection with drums. I'm looking to create music that people can react to viscerally, and people will respond to viscerally. I think that you can listen to music, to a song you've never heard before and not really like it, but also feel like you're responding to it physically whether you like it or not. I think that's a powerful aspect about music, and I think that's something that draws me to drums.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Song, Powerful, Thinking

  Source: www.coupdemainmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I did take guitar lessons as a teenager, though, and I started to teach myself how to play everything I could play on the guitar on piano, so I had a really weird, non-traditional route to proficiency. I think it probably helped me come at things from a new angle.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Teenager, Thinking, Teach

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I like the idea that a song can be about a romantic relationship, but it can also about a relationship to your career, or a relationship to your city. It can be about a person, but at the same time it can be about a situation.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Song, Situation, Romantic Relationship

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  6 Copy quote

• It's hard to say how time factors into your work, because sometimes things will come to you very quickly, but it will take years for the ideas to be gestating in your mind.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Mind, Sometimes

  Source: www.coupdemainmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Throughout college I was getting better and better at making recordings, producing songs, making different kinds of beats. I was starting to learn the signifiers of production from the '60s, the '80s. We never re-recorded anything. All the record companies that wanted to sign us - except for one - were excited about the recordings that we had done ourselves.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Song, College, Get Better

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• As far as the lyrics go, I think I was negotiating a moment in my life where I didn't feel happy. I think I had some existential frustration and I was wrestling with that on a few different levels. I was feeling like I wanted to change a lot of things.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Wrestling, Frustration, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I wanted to make an album where every song is kind of interacting - where you can't tell what's the string arrangement and what's the song. I guess that came out of going to college, majoring in music, studying classical music, and even as a kid, being really drawn to classical music.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Song, Kids, College

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• It took me some time to join the various streams of making music that was technically good and making music that made me feel good.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Feel Good, Various

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• At some point I decided I didn't want to learn any more guitar technique. I was at that level where the next mountain there was to climb was Van Halen and I didn't really like Van Halen.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Mountain, Van Halen

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I was lucky to have a guitar teacher who asked me what I wanted to learn. I brought in "High & Dry" by Radiohead and "Mr. Jones" by Counting Crows and he was like, "Alright, I'm gonna teach you these, but you're also gonna learn some stuff that I want you to learn." He taught me Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, so I was getting the technical stuff and the fun stuff.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Teacher, Fun, Crow

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I took one piano lesson and hated it and then didn't take any piano lessons until I was 18.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Hated

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I would say I was a little bit outgoing, a little bit shy. I was definitely much more shy than my brother. I was young - age six. I was really drawn to music because my brother started playing instruments and I wanted to be at his level, even though I was younger.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Brother, Age, Shy

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• My parents left Iran in 1979 and moved to France and then moved to the U.S. My brother was born in France and I was born in New York. I think my parents left France because they felt their kids would never be accepted by French culture. Here they thought we could feel American - that we could feel safe in that way - which was important to them, given what their experiences were in Iran. They used to joke about how I could be president because I was the only one born in America.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Brother, Kids, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I had no problem working for 15 hours straight when I was producing someone else, but I couldn't do it with my own songs. It took that moment of pointing the camera at myself to realize that it was okay to get lost in making my own music. I think before that I was scared of pushing myself to the point of staring into the abyss.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Song, Thinking, Scared

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• 'Unbelievers' was a song that we felt like we could tackle, so that's one of the reasons we wanted to start playing it live, we really believed in that song and we still believe in that song a lot.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Song, Believe, Reason

  Source: www.coupdemainmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• We've always said that our band is pretty much an open system and there's no rules governing anything... so who knows what the future will hold?

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Band, Said, Knows

  Source: www.coupdemainmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I like the idea that a song can be something that you can lean on, both for the songwriter and for the person who hears the song.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Song, Ideas, Persons

  Source: www.coupdemainmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• I love working with Angel Deradoorian, she's a joy to work with. She's fab at singing and she has a real... she has an understanding that's both intellectual and emotional about singing, that I think that very few people have.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Real, Angel, Emotional

  Source: www.coupdemainmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Now that that album's done [TModern Vampires of the City], I have time to revisit things that I was working on earlier, previous to it. I actually found it very helpful to be working on some music on my own.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Cities, Vampire, Albums

  Source: www.coupdemainmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• One of the things that we talked about was this idea of 'Memento Mori' - like the reminder of our own mortality - and so we were sort of trying to express that in our press photos. And it's one of the themes of the album [Modern Vampires of the City] as well.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Cities, Ideas, Vampire

  Source: www.coupdemainmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• We thought there was also something that was humorous but at the same time powerful and deep about naming the album, 'Modern Vampires Of The City'.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Powerful, Humorous, Cities

  Source: www.coupdemainmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

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