Filed under: Music | Tags: boys like us, discovery, rostam batmanglij, vampire weekend
There are several reasons why I admire Rostam Batmanglij. As the guitarist/keyboardist/producer for Vampire Weekend, he contributed to what was, in my opinion, one of the most self-assured and consistent debut albums I’d heard in a long time. Like ?uestlove of the Roots, Batmanglij isn’t the lead singer, but his fingerprints are all over the band, one of the reasons Vampire Weekend successfully catapulted past the dreaded, cliched and oft-discussed “sophomore slump.”
As one half of electro-R&B-ish duo Discovery, he cranked out two of my favorite jams from ’09, and proved himself to be a proponent of my second favorite artistic flourish (after spoken word interludes): the mid-song tempo change.
And, as Boys Like Us, he’s put out some killer remixes, including his take on Born Ruffian’s “What to Say,” which I think surpasses the original. This is without mentioning his following in the footsteps of Pharrell, Santigold and Julian Casablancas with a collaboration for Converse’s Three Artists campaign (see video above). This guy’s clearly on a creative roll. So much so, that despite the fact that every journalist will ask him about it in every interview he does in the near future, his recent outing and his much talked-about Iranian-American background are kind of the least interesting things about him, or at least about his public persona. You get the sense from his Twitter feed and his Tumblr account and various interviews he’s given, that his art — in its many forms — is really central to his life. That authenticity comes through in his work, as well, which is something that can’t be said of a lot of young artists who’ve reached the level of success Batmanglij has with Vampire Weekend and his other side projects. I take that as a sign that he’s an artist who’ll be sticking around for awhile. More from Batmanglij below:
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