Rostam Batmanglij Quotes

I knew that I tend to always gravitate to the indie side of things.

I enjoy independent music, even more than Bollywood.

My music isn't mainstream music.

I didn't grow up with indie rock - I mean, I listened to bands that are considered indie rock, but I think that term is dead and uninteresting.

All the music I listened to in high school that I loved and that moved me wasn't the same music other kids were listening to in school. I got into punk rock and new wave, then dub and hip-hop.

I never wrote music for the mainstream.

We decided to start our own group because we were bored with everything we heard... Everything was 10th-generation Led Zeppelin... Overproduced, or just junk. We missed music like it used to be.

There are always young bands playing in their garages. A lot of punk rock is not going to be in the mainstream. It's below the radar. The beauty of it is that you're not supposed to always know. It's subterranean.

I associate creativity with independent music.

You gotta look beyond the mainstream... the mainstream'll drown you, you know? There's always a pulse in the underground that I love. And the pulse in the underground is what keeps heavy metal alive.

When we first started, we were a band from Athens and that was so off the map.

I'm definitely a cult artist.

I'm not making music for people who like Disney shows. I make music for people who like music.

That's what I love about our music - it'll never be a hit because you can't dance to it.

I'm not so interested in being indie just for the sake of being indie.

Mixtapes have always been a guerrilla-style means of moving music.

We've been allowed to operate unmolested on the fringes of the music scene, really. That's where we enjoy it most.

It's not like I set out to be 'the indie guy.'

The folk that you get on Radio 1 isn't the sort of thing that I'm into: it's kind of too uptempo and jaunty for me. I prefer a bit of atmosphere and a bit of darkness.

I know it sounds weird, but the kind of music I write isn't the kind of music that I listen to, which is quite underground, left-of-centre stuff like PJ Harvey and Tom Waits.

When I came up in a band - not just in a band, but a kind of underground DIY community - there was such a clear cut distinction between what pop was and what not pop was in very simplistic terms.

I'm not a pop rapper. That's nothing against pop music - I love pop music. I've jumped on pop records for people and still will, but I'm not a pop artist. I didn't start from there. I started in underground music. I consider myself an underground artist, as well as a producer.

I seriously hate pop music and all things super-commercial, so I'd be hard pressed to feel embarrassed by anything I listen to. Besides, I have a three-year-old, so I don't have time for guilty pleasures anyway!

Indie rock is just as susceptible - if not more susceptible - to all the gross things about people becoming total ass clowns in music, and only worrying about money and image. I'm not interested in being a part of that.

There's not a lot of precedent for weird, bald musicians in the Lower East Side making records in their bedrooms and going on to sell a lot of copies of the record. Especially if you look at the pop climate.