Together with his cousin Henry, Nate Terepka has made his name fronting the Brooklyn band, Zula, a band who combine pop sensibilities with labyrinthine, left-field experimental textures. With the help of various friends and guests, Terepka has recorded his debut solo release, Sunlight Farm, a record which maintains the playful vibe that makes Zula so vibrant, though working in a simpler pop-folk aesthetic.
The EP is intended as an exploration of being alone. As the press release describes, it charts “isolation from different angles; needing it, reaching for it, and acknowledging its importance while also trying to reach beyond it.” As such, the record is not necessarily a lonely one, with solitude held as a nuanced and complicated thing that can be as rewarding as it can damaging. The rich layers of the instrumentation feel allegorical in this regard, a collision of different sounds and tones that weave a mood difficult to pin under any one tag. Upbeat, wistful, peaceful, a little sad—all could be used simultaneously, and still not quite get close to the true feel of the songs.
We’re excited to share, ‘Tempelhof’, the opening track from Sunlight Farm and one which really sets out the Nate Terepka style. Written during a late evening bike ride around the titular location, a now abandoned airport in Berlin’s Tempelhof-Schöneberg borough, the track is populated by an array of fond strangers and warmed by crepuscular sunshine, though Terepka positions himself just slightly outside of their world. Instead, he is a viewer, a tourist alone in a foreign country, immensely pleased to witness such a moment, yet all the same tinged by a certain sadness in knowing that the scene could never truly be his. The result is a nostalgic kind of affection that occurs long before the moment fades, happy to just pass through the scene, to witness and remember it.
Photograph by Megan Hattie
