EOS

Album: Half-Light (2016)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • Rostam is guitarist/keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij. One of the founding members of Vampire Weekend, he announced his departure from the band in January 2016 - this is his debut solo single. Batmanglij told Pitchfork how it came together:

    "I invited engineer Shane Stoneback to live with me for five day stretches to work on recordings. On the last day of his first trip I was fatigued from all the songs we'd worked on and wanted to start recording something new … I had this one idea from a while back stored as a voice memo on my phone. It was the chorus of 'EOS' and it had come out of me all at once: melody, lyrics and chords. It's rare that that happens for me - I'm always collecting ideas on my phone but usually it's individual building blocks of a song, this was the essential elements all coming out together.

    The rest of the song started to take shape because what I recorded kept reminding of a very specific place and time in my life. I wanted to capture that feeling, and finishing the song became about chasing it down."
  • The music video was directed by Batmanglij himself and includes animation courtesy of motions graphics artist Jon Race. The clip was based on a 25-second exposure photograph taken while visiting desert dunes just outside Jaisalmer, India.

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Top American Idol Moments: Songs And Scandals

Top American Idol Moments: Songs And ScandalsSong Writing

Surprise exits, a catfight and some very memorable performances make our list of the most memorable Idol moments.

Mike Scott of The Waterboys

Mike Scott of The WaterboysSongwriter Interviews

The stories behind "Whole Of The Moon" and "Red Army Blues," and why rock music has "outlived its era of innovation."

Dave Edmunds

Dave EdmundsSongwriter Interviews

A renowned guitarist and rock revivalist, Dave took "I Hear You Knocking" to the top of the UK charts and was the first to record Elvis Costello's "Girls Talk."

Lip-Synch Rebels

Lip-Synch RebelsSong Writing

What happens when Kurt Cobain, Iron Maiden and Johnny Lydon are told to lip-synch? Some hilarious "performances."

Michael Bolton

Michael BoltonSongwriter Interviews

Into the vaults for this talk with Bolton from the '80s when he was a focused on writing songs for other artists.

Johnette Napolitano of Concrete Blonde

Johnette Napolitano of Concrete BlondeSongwriter Interviews

The singer/bassist for Concrete Blonde talks about how her songs come from clairvoyance, and takes us through the making of their hit "Joey."