You’d be forgiven for thinking that the spotlight doesn’t sit comfortably with Rostam Batmanglij. As keyboardist and producer for Vampire Weekend, he cut a static figure on stage, statuesque behind his synth rig as frontman Ezra Koenig and bassist Chris Baio bounced around animatedly. His response to the band scoring back-to-back number one albums with 2010’s Contra followed by 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City – a record that took them to UK arenas and won a Grammy – was to walk away amicably at the end of its touring cycle.
That move heralded the opening of a new musical act – one that again had him in the background, rather than front and centre. Since leaving the group, he’s become best-known for his versatile and innovative production work, which has run across the genre spectrum from out-and-out pop (Charli xcx, Carly Rae Jepsen) to R&B (Frank Ocean, Solange) to the kind of indie fare he started out on; in 2016, he made a sensational collaborative record with The Walkmen’s Hamilton Leithauser.
The whole while, he notes on a video call from his home studio in Los Angeles, he has continued to chip away at solo work that takes him out of his comfort zone, both stylistically, and in terms of it requiring him to take centre stage for a change. “I think my first album was kind of rooted in classical songwriting,” he says of 2017’s kaleidoscopic Half-Light, “and on [2021’s second solo record] Changephobia, I was kind of playing around with jazz. I think I always start out with a bunch of lofty ideas. Only some of them stick around until the end.”
