Rostam. Credit: Jason Stone.
Rostam has announced his new album ‘Changephobia’ will be out 4th June on Matsor Projects (via Secretly Distribution). Alongside the announcement is the new single ‘4Runner’.
As one of the founding members of Vampire Weekend and producer of their first three albums, Rostam Batmanglij’s new single ‘4Runner’ captures the intimate thrill of a road trip with someone special. His ‘Changephobia’ sees him influenced by 1950s Bebop and Nineties Neo-Psych and touches on global warming on ‘These Kids We Knew’, sharing a ride out of town with a loved one on ‘From the Back of a Cab’, and sex on ‘Unfold You’. Of the album’s title and its meaning, Rostam says:
“A few years ago I met a stranger on a park bench, somehow I found myself opening up to him; revealing recent changes in my life that had altered its course, and he said, “Change is good. Go with it.” I realized that I had never heard that sentiment expressed before.
Transphobia, biphobia, homophobia – these words hold a weight of threat, and it occurred to me that the threats they bare— the fears they describe – are rooted in a fear of change: a fear of the unknown, of a future that is not yet familiar, one in which there is a change of traditions, definitions, and distributions of power.
So gender, too, was on my mind while creating this album, as I came to find myself writing about love and connection but not wanting to place relationships in a gendered context.
This collection of songs is not celebrating a fear of change. Rather, it’s the opposite. It’s about who we are capable of becoming if we recognize these fears in ourselves and rise above them.”
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