Rostam Batmanglij, former Vampire Weekend band member and producer, will perform songs from his debut album "Half Light" of his solo project, Rostam, at 9:30 p.m. Thursday, March 29, at the Bishop Bar. The musician's show is open to people 18 and older.
All of his concerts on this tour are played with a string quartet comprised of two violins, a viola and a cello, Rostam said. He will also use pre-recorded tracks for several songs, in addition to the quartet and drums.
Rostam has been playing with string quartets since he was a music student at Columbia University in the early 2000s. He said he has figured out a way to allow all of the instrumental sounds to be heard so they are not competing with each other.
Rostam said the performance will feature original projections and light work to convey a sense of motion or time passing. The projections are a mixture of computer elements, photography, drawing and film, Rostam said. Rostam has been working on them with a motion graphics engineer since 2015.
He said he cannot reveal too many details about his next album, other than to say he will be playing one new song not featured on “Half Light” at the show.The song is called "In a River" and it is the first song Rostam ever wrote on mandolin.
Making another album crept up on him, Rostam said.
“It is something I work on a little bit every day, whether I realize it or not,” Rostam said.
Alternative indie artist Sam Buck, formerly Sam Buck Rosen, will open for Rostam. Buck has released one album called “Dominant Mind.”
“We have worked on music projects together in different ways,” Rostam said.
One such project is the video for Buck’s song “Mexico,” which was directed and shot by Rostam in 2009.
In addition to being a member of Vampire Weekend, Rostam produced the band’s first three albums— “Vampire Weekend” in 2008, “Contra” in 2010 and “Modern Vampires of the City” in 2013.
Rostam also produced the album “LP” with his group Discovery in 2009 and the album “I Had a Dream You Were Mine," which is a 2016 collaboration with Hamilton Leithauser, the former front man of the Walkmen. Most recently, Rostam produced his solo debut album “Half Light” in 2017.
As a child growing up in Washington, D.C., Rostam loved drawing and considered designing cars and painting someday. He said he knew he wanted to do something creative.
“When I discovered recording and how you can layer music on top of each other or layer sounds on top of other sounds, I realized that’s what I was born to do,” Rostam said. “I felt like it was a conjunction of making visual art and making music.”
At Columbia University, Rostam studied classical harmony, the study of music notes sounding simultaneously in the classical tradition.
“At the same time I was studying classical music, I was recording on my own and getting better and better at recording,” Rostam said.
He was working on records throughout college with Ezra Koenig, lead vocalist and guitarist of Vampire Weekend, Rostam said.
“Vampire Weekend was this thing that happened as college was ending senior year,” Rostam said. “It felt like the culmination of different things we had done and different ways we had expressed ourselves.”
In 2016, Rostam announced his decision to leave the band Vampire Weekend in pursuit of his solo projects.
Rostam said in an interview with Rolling Stone he is OK with starting up again and not taking the recognition he has gained through participation in Vampire Weekend for granted. He acknowledged in the interview he is well-known in some groups while not as well-known in others.
Rostam co-wrote and produced the song "Diplomat's Son" which was released on the album "Contra" in 2010. In an interview with Out Magazine, Rostam described the song as a dancehall song about a gay relationship.
Rostam came out as gay in 2010 in a Rolling Stone profile of Vampire Weekend. Rostam said his advice to people considering coming out is to do it sooner rather than later and to understand that it is an internal and external process.
“When you are in the process of coming out, that’s the beginning,” Rostam said. “There’s a middle and an end, or maybe there’s no end. We are always coming out.”
