Team Love recently released a musical love letter to New Paltz.
The record label released Die Pfalz, their local musician compilation, on Aug. 24. The album features an eclectic mix of four New Paltz artists: Breakfast in Fur, Shana Falana, Cycad and The Bloodletters.
The historical significance of the town is reflected in the album’s name. Die Pfalz, meaning New Paltz, was the name given to the town when the French Huguenots settled here in the late 17th century.
“We thought it was a really cool name and we sort of ran with the idea,” Nate Krenkl, the owner of Team Love RavenHouse Gallery and co-founder of Team Love, said.
Krenkl said the idea for the album came about a year ago. He said the label had seen some artists they liked and, rather than releasing a typical album, they decided a compilation would highlight as much local talent as possible.
Team Love first contacted Breakfast in Fur, comprised of Dan Wolfe, Kaitlin Van Pelt, Michael Hollis and Matt Ross.
“Breakfast in Fur recommended us to Cycad and Shana Falana . . . and the Bloodletters was sort of [a] separate process,” Krenkl said.
He said once the four bands were chosen, he told them to go out and send the label music.
“The Bloodletters were all done with their record so that was all finished, but Breakfast in Fur wanted to do new stuff so that process took around eight months,” Krenkl said.
Breakfast in Fur completely engineered and recorded their three songs. Unlike their EP, which was primarily completed by Wolfe, the production and sound of their Die Pfalz songs were a collaborative effort.
“It’s been recorded in our collective living rooms and bedrooms,” Van Pelt said. “We even made a sound isolation booth with couch pillows to do my vocals.”
The album shifts from the ethereal, psychedelic pop of Shana Falana and Breakfast in Fur, to Cycad’s electronic dance music, to The Bloodletters’ 1970s rock sound.
“I choose all the songs with a little bit of awareness of the juxtaposition,” Krenkl said. “We certainly wanted to paint a broad picture, I mean it could be more broad, but . . . we wanted to introduce something that wasn’t necessarily obvious to people who visit here occasionally.”
Krenkl said they had a lot of ideas for the album art, but they settled on basic photography from the area that had “a sort of postcard quality to it.” On the artwork, they included the phrase “Pour Le Village,” which means “for the village.”
“We kind of adopted [that quote] as the motto for the record,” Krenkl said. “Mostly we wanted to do something people from this area, even if they’re not paying attention to the music scene, or if they’re into something else, or wherever their relationship to music exists, we wanted to create an actual physical package that they would find interesting and be sort of proud of.”
Falana said that Team Love is doing what record labels used to do and don’t do anymore — giving back to the community.
“I’m feeling really inspired by the work that people are putting into the [local] music scene,” Falana said. “They did a great thing for [us] and we should give back to them.”
Alison Lieber, a Team Love employee, said it’s important that all the bands are friends first and support each other.
“It’s a really nice way for us to try to give back to the community because we have found so much here as far as the arts and music goes,” she said. “So this is our way of saying that we’re here and we love what we’re hearing and seeing.”