Indie pop's fave producer
Rostam is making a jazz record.
Well, kind of. He's stepping out of his comfort zone to reference more bebop on his upcoming second solo album and the follow up to 2017's 'Half Light'. That's proper music talk, but rest assured, it's just a bit saxier than what we're used to.
And it's not the pop kind of sax we hear on, say, The 1975's albums either, it's the more unconventional, classic kind. We've heard bits of it on Haim's 'Women in Music Pt. III' – a record entirely produced by Rostam alongside Ariel Rechtshaid – especially on 'Summer Girl', and there's heaps of it on this album's first offering '
Unfold You'.
"I feel like some people I've seen have felt the song was very sexual, which I think is good. But I think for other people, maybe it doesn't strike them that way," he says of the song's reception. The track is a delicate, finger-clicking number with, of course, a major saxophone line running throughout, and a little taster of what's to come hopefully in the first half of 2021.
Rostam meets us live from his self-built studio in Los Angeles, which today, he notes is particularly lived in (although his assistant usually cleans it up and, get this, vacuums the couches for him) because he's been hard at work finishing up his next solo record.
"I mean, it's not supposed to be finished at any time. I guess it's supposed to be finished when I'm happy with it, which is definitely what I believe. I think there are probably people who can work on something forever and there are people who maybe should work on things a little longer than they let themselves and I'm more in the camp of I could work on it forever."
He's been working on the record for some time now, and basically been in the studio all of lockdown, save for a trip to Massachusetts in July. It's a trip that he takes every summer, and this time was a well-deserved break after polishing off two records – Clairo's 'Immunity' and Haim's latest – and buckling down with his own.
"I was even going so far as like, I was using Pro Tools as I was packing up to go get into the car to get to the airport. And I was like, trying to bring all my stuff that I would need to work on music while I was by the beach. And then I got to the beach. And I was like, oh I'm not doing this. I'm not doing music. So it was great to just take a break from everything for three weeks.
"And at the very end of the trip, I decided to make a music video, which was the video that came out for the song 'Unfold You', and that was made the last three days on the beach. When I came back, I basically had an album to finish, and I knew exactly what I needed to do, it's been fun since then."
