Rostam Batmanglij
Sometimes the hangover provides inspiration.
I think that's kind of the perfect mix, where you do something that you're not sure about, you feel like you're taking a risk, and then you turn around and look at the artists that you're collaborating with and you can read the expression on their face if they like it or they hate it.
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, and then we moved to D.C.
I'd like to release solo songs on a regular basis, but it's pretty difficult for me to finish them.
I can't even begin to express the joy I get from writing songs, both on my own and with others, I hold it all sacred.
Whatever you are making, whether it's a song, an album, a painting, a film, you're connecting with a tradition, and I do feel connected to New York music.
I don't identify as white. I have a complex relationship with whiteness.
When I moved to New York, I remember thinking, 'I'm never going to live anywhere else.'
It's hard to make music that's sexy that's not cheesy.
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.
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.
When my mom was pregnant with me, my parents moved from France to America.
I want to live in a world that is less white supremacist, straight supremacist, male supremacist.
I never identified with 'indie,' I don't like that word.
I admire Brian Eno so much in how he seems to push the idea of less being more - his touch is to crack open a window and let the light in.
Even though I've been making electronic music since I was 14, it's hard for people to see you as a producer with a musical identity when you're contextualized in a band that performs on a stage.
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.
I think as a producer, you're always sort of questioning if what you're contributing is something that an artist loves and elevates a song.
There are songs out there in the world which, in some ways, seem so unmusical.
As a person who doesn't identify as straight, any love song I write is contextualized by a queer identity.
My music is about identity.
Because of who I am, and how open I am, there's something inherently political about just writing love songs.
Only a straight white person would have no concept of what visibility is. They've never contended with anything but visibility.
A lot of what being a producer is, is giving people space. Like psychologically being there to help them realize what they're trying to do.
I certainly think that my music is a response to my experience as a person who doesn't identify as straight, as a person who grew up American.
I've always had a complex relationship towards my identity as an American.
The idea of the gay experience, it feels like a relic. I felt like in the '90s when we were watching the gay characters on 'The Real World,' there was definitely a gay experience that was distinct from a straight experience. If you talk to high schoolers in 2017, I don't know that is as much a part of how they experience a social dynamic.
A lot of people get a high from being onstage. I found ways to enjoy it. But I get it from being in the studio.
The most exciting songs to me are the unlikely hits, when you think, 'I love this, but why is it on the radio?'
I made a quote-unquote 'album' for my senior project of high school. As soon as I finished making it I realized it wasn't the kind of music I wanted to make.
Throughout college I was getting better and better at making recordings, producing songs, making different kinds of beats.
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.
As a kid I had gone to New York a handful of times with my family. I definitely think it planted a seed in me.
I'm trying to get to a point where I tell people, if you want to get in touch with me, please don't rely on email. I don't want to be a slave to it.
It's easier for me to remember things based on the releases of albums. The year is such an arbitrary thing.
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 don't think teenagers in 2017 identify with heterosexuality, and that's a positive.
I think that for a lot of us gay people, we do feel that pop is our music. We identify with it and its iconography, and that's been a tradition.
I'll probably continue writing songs about New York until I die.
I work on music with different people, and I work on music on my own. That's my life.
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.
Well, I think that I have a complicated relationship with whiteness because oftentimes, I pass as white, and I recognize that. I would be disingenuous to pretend that I don't pass as white.
I don't believe in expertise. I don't believe that a film critic feels a film more deeply than any person who walks into a theater. I don't believe that.
It's always my mission to try to do something that hasn't been done before, whether that's musically, lyrically or in terms of mixing.
I am a very big fan of Brian Eno, of his work as an artist and making his music, and as a producer. In some ways, I have looked to his career as a model for my own.
I'm as guilty as anyone else of listening to music track by track.
What I love is the openness of collaboration.
The whole point of Lady Gaga is that anyone can do it. A few years ago she was a nobody. She talks about how it's important for people to know that by sheer force of will they can bring about anything they want in their lives.
Some of the journalists who've ended up writing about our band - and this is disappointing to say - have a very narrow outlook. And because of that they fundamentally misunderstand us.
I guess my first instrument was the recorder when I was about five or six.