I've always been very good at helping other people finish their songs.
— Rostam Batmanglij
I'm interested in making art that is available to everybody.
Films should involve a director's idiosyncrasies as much as possible I think.
It doesn't matter if you record with a microphone on a laptop or at a friend's house. Now it's more of a danger of things sounding too high-fi than sounding too low-fi.
There are rules that are so blatantly broken on 'Contra,' like structures of harmony and texture.
I thought it would be interesting to play classical music on rock instruments.
I figured out that it was important for me to have my identity, just live independently and like being myself, musically.
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.
There's a bunch of rules that I want to break. I have a rule-breaking streak.
I'm not interested in anyone who would want me for the wrong reasons.
I like there to be some secrets.
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.
In the West we are constantly hit with music of Middle Eastern descent signifying terror, intrigue or sorrow.
I feel like when I was in college I was listening to the Walkmen a lot and I actually have a memory of having a dream and in the dream I saw the Walkmen perform with saxes.
I'm very aware of what, say, electric guitar recordings in the '60s sounded like.
Whenever I work on a project I put all of myself into it.
It's interesting because neither of my parents play instruments. They both love music, but neither of them are musicians. Somehow, I was drawn to it.
I'm very conscious of the fact that I devoted my life to recording music, recordings and writing songs.
There's a joy I get from collaborating with other artists, and there's a joy I get from making songs on my own.
There is a sense of tranquility that I think people can get from being in an organized group, where a singular leader handles the responsibilities of individual thinking.
Radio or no radio, I just like the way records sound when the drums and vocals are loud.
You want the personality of each performer - whether it's singing or bass or drums or piano - to be intact. In some ways it's much more challenging to preserve that and to also make music that sounds modern.
I never felt like there were things I couldn't express lyrically in Vampire Weekend. I was always proud of everything that we wrote together.
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.
On the song 'Step,' the chorus is Ezra is singing into my laptop with the laptop microphone, and you can hear the trains going by my apartment, but we liked the quality of that recording.
When I work with other artists, I really want to bring out the most in their voices and I want to hold myself to the same standard.
I feel like I've had this ability to infiltrate, as an outsider and an insider, different groups.
I think when I work with artists, I'm at their service, and I'm at the service of either their vision or a vision that we find together and we share.
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.
Shangri-La is one of the few studios in which you can sit in the control room and open a window behind you. You can feel the light and the air coming off the ocean. You can have a musical world in front of you and the natural world behind you.
Yeah, I'd always wanted to do a song with finger-picked, nylon-string guitar.
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.
The first Vampire Weekend record was the first full-length album that I produced.
What's interesting about Vampire Weekend, everyone in the band, except for me, had a band in high school in which they were the lead singers. And I'm the one who never had that experience.
The thing I love about car design is that it's sculpture everybody appreciates, everybody has access to.
I like to be able to work quickly, to capture the spark of an idea before it goes out.
I always felt more connected with people who are proud of who they are.
Classical music can be catchy, so can African instrumental guitar music. It's not just pop songs that are catchy. Rhythms can be catchy, too.
I love being able to record in a room that's surrounded by trees.
I think that's the only way I know how to write songs, is to think about my life, and also to think about the words at the same time.
I would hope to make a record that interacts with culture in a macro sense. That is something to aspire to.
I was listening 'Plastic Ono Band,' the John Lennon album a lot, and that might have had some inspiration on me.
I was fascinated by the word ‘Rudy,' which is connected to the Jamaican term 'rude boy,' which migrated from Jamaica to London. I was also fascinated by that name, because it exists in Persian culture and Iranian culture. There is actually a place called Rudy in Iran, and there's Iranians that I know with the name Rudy.
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.
I think that all music is inherently political, and, at the same time, I'm interested in the politics of inclusion not exclusion. So I think that my goal is to make music that anybody can hear and feel moved by.
I've had experiences where my life will try to tell me something in a dream and sometimes it's something I'm not ready to hear.
Sometimes the hangover provides inspiration.
When an old tape machine makes pitch wobble, some people would say that compromises fidelity and would try to get rid of it. But to me that wobble adds richness, it instantly brings back the feelings you associate with old recordings.
I don't have to just have one kind of life. I can have several different creative lives.
I always want to be somewhat uncomfortable. But at the same time I want to make music that you react to viscerally.
