Rostam Batmanglij has just released a new single called “Gravity Don’t Pull Me”. This is his second solo track from his announcement that he was leaving Vampire Weekend.
Along with the song he released a music video that features himself singing in front of two male dancers: Jack Grabow and Sam Asa Pratt who dance with electro-style pop moves that give a quirky flair to the woeful song.
Rostam will showcase his first solo performance on June 12th as an opener for Brian Wilson at the Northside festival in Brooklyn.
Rostam has been a singer and producer for some time now and has hinted in the past at taking more time to spend more time on his personal projects making this endeavor a long time coming.
Rostam shared about his reasoning “My identity as a songwriter and producer, I realized, needs to stand on its own. Still connected to the [people] I work with, but through the songs we make together.”
When announcing his split with Vampire Weekend Rostam made a point to note that he plans on collaborating with frontman Ezra Koenig multiple times in the future. Koenig agreed that he knew from the beginning that they had a future working both independently and as a team.
“A couple years ago, Rostam and I sat down at his house & talked [about] whether our collaboration was dependent on being members of the same band. We both firmly agreed that nope, it was not. In fact, we agreed that our collaboration was more important.” Koenig said.
Rostam’s only other musical release so far is another song called “Wood” that debuted three days after his announcement of the split. It has a Persian background theme and is said to be a self described “Queer love song” said Rolling Stone.