Rostam Batmanglij

The whole point of Lady Gaga is that anyone can do it. A few years ago she was a nobody. She talks about how it's important for people to know that by sheer force of will they can bring about anything they want in their lives.

I don't have to just have one kind of life. I can have several different creative lives.

I work on music with different people, and I work on music on my own. That's my life.

As a kid I had gone to New York a handful of times with my family. I definitely think it planted a seed in me.

Shangri-La is one of the few studios in which you can sit in the control room and open a window behind you. You can feel the light and the air coming off the ocean. You can have a musical world in front of you and the natural world behind you.

Well, the announcement to say that I was no longer a member of Vampire Weekend was something that was in the works for a long time. I knew that it was the right choice for me.

I always want to be somewhat uncomfortable. But at the same time I want to make music that you react to viscerally.

Even though I've been making electronic music since I was 14, it's hard for people to see you as a producer with a musical identity when you're contextualized in a band that performs on a stage.

I was listening 'Plastic Ono Band,' the John Lennon album a lot, and that might have had some inspiration on me.

Sometimes the hangover provides inspiration.

You want the personality of each performer - whether it's singing or bass or drums or piano - to be intact. In some ways it's much more challenging to preserve that and to also make music that sounds modern.

I like to be able to work quickly, to capture the spark of an idea before it goes out.