Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam – “A 1000 Times”
Last month Rostam Batmanglij performed his first solo concert since leaving Vampire Weekend, opening for Brian Wilson at Brooklyn’s Northside Festival. Throughout the set he was joined onstage by a number of his friends and frequent collaborators, including Angel Deradoorian and Ra Ra Riot’s Wes Miles, as well as the Walkmen’s Hamilton Leithauser, who most recently teamed up with Rostam for his 2014 solo debut Black Hours. While Rostam’s been releasing a number of excellent singles under his own name since leaving his former band, it seems his first full-length following the departure is going to be a joint album with Leithauser. The pair, adopting the self-explanatory moniker Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam, previewed their upcoming project’s lead single “A 1000 Times” on Sirius XMU today. Here’s Rostam speaking with the show’s host Jenny Eliscu about the collaboration:
I always wanted to try to really capture his voice in a way I felt like maybe it had never been captured before, just in terms of how it was recorded, and also pushing him to really scream,” he said. “Because it’s interesting, like his voice has this kind of choir boy aspect to it, but then when he screams, it’s like a little bit of the choir boy is still intact, and I think that’s a special blend of things. He sings in a way like no one else sings. So I kind of felt like it was my role as the producer, to bring that out of him. And I think “A 1000 Times” is probably one of the best examples of that.
Listen below.
Here’s a photo of them on a bench.
“A 1000 Times” is out now via Glassnote.