Rostam Batmanglij

Rostam is talking about the music video for Giving Up The Gun

In the video for Cousins, Rostam is playing his own Sheraton.

Rostam is shown playing a yellow Harmony Silvertone in the music video for Giving Up The Gun

Rostam playing his duo sonic

You can see Rostam using a sunburst Fender Musicmaster here.

In this interview in the 'Happy Sound' section Rostam metions they used Fender Deluxe amps on Vampire Weekends first two albums.

At 3:56 - 4:00 there is a view of the Yamaha vss-30 played by Rostam of Vampire Weekend. This is during a live performance at Studio Q.

In this interview Rostam says he used a Korg Trident when making his song "Bike Dream"

One of the last things that we recorded on the album was a guitar outro that I wrote and played for “Don’t Lie.” We just plugged a Les Paul guitar into the DI of the Apollo. I got really used to using a combination of Avid SansAmp and the ATR-102 Mastering Tape Recorder Plug-in — just those two with some AltiVerb Reverb. That gave us a scrappy sound that I’m very fond of.

One of the last things that we recorded on the album was a guitar outro that I wrote and played for “Don’t Lie.” We just plugged a Les Paul guitar into the DI of the Apollo. I got really used to using a combination of Avid SansAmp and the ATR-102 Mastering Tape Recorder Plug-in — just those two with some AltiVerb Reverb. That gave us a scrappy sound that I’m very fond of.

There was an earlier version of the song that was just relentless, with the drums at full blast the whole time. For the middle section, I decided to try to take the kick track and run it through the SPL Transient Designer and maximize the decay.

On the song “Don’t Lie,” I put the Fairchild 670 Compressor Plug-In on all the vocals, and on “Obvious Bicycle,” we had the Fairchild on lead vocals. I don’t know how else to describe it, but it just makes them sound buttery.

When we were together, there’d be times when I would set up in one room with my laptop and UAD-2 Satellite FireWire card and he would be in another room with the Apollo.

Above all, in mixing and mastering, Batmanglij was concerned with warmth of sound, calling for the use of a Sonnox Oxford SuprEsser plug-in for monitoring and controlling harsh frequencies.

Rostam is talking about the music video for Giving Up The Gun

"Tito, who acted as engineer, had a bunch of API preamps and some outboard gear, like [Empirical Labs] Distressors, which he used on some of the snare tracks." - Rostam

In this interview in the 'Happy Sound' section Rostam metions they used Pro Tools HD during the production of Contra.

In this interview Rostam states he used Reason to create the synth bass on this song Bike Dream