When he isn’t on tour as a guitar tech for Foo Fighters and Kim Gordon, Salar Rajabnik is making his own indie-rock inroads under the Darker Lighter moniker. The Los Angeles-based songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist was born in Atlanta and raised in Tehran and Kansas City.
“Tehran gave me a rich cultural touchstone—an in-person connection to one of the oldest civilizations on earth,” says Rajabnik, who recently returned from the SNL 50 celebration, where he was tuning guitars for Pat Smear. “KC gave me a blank slate of sorts. Kansas Citians tend to see themselves as living on a sort of landlocked island.”
Set for release May 2 via the tiny Mishi imprint, Darker Lighter’s self-titled debut was recorded at Foo Fighters’ Studio 606 with producer Robert Adam Stevenson (Paul McCartney, Queens Of The Stone Age, Kills). The latest single, “Nice To Meet You,” is a fairly conventional rocker with a title befitting Rajabnik’s life on the go.
“If I recall correctly, there might have been some kind of scenario where I bumped into someone on tour and found myself wondering if I’d ever see them again,” says Rajabnik. “Once I set it to music, the song evolved into having broader meaning than the initial one. Now I feel it’s more about relationships of all kinds in general—and how they evolve and come and go in life.”
We’re proud to premiere Darker Lighter’s “Nice To Meet You.”
—Hobart Rowland
