Opening with warm, analogue keys and gentle guitars, Wonka feels like the warm afternoon California sun falling through a window, resting on my skin. That west coast sound reflects Derek Simpson’s journey, as an artist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist who moved from Boston to the music scene of Long Beach in LA.
The sound employed by Simpson on Wonka has a beautiful subtlety and richness. With an ever so slightly cracked vocal style creating a sense of emotional authenticity, Derek’s performance slips between a standard register and a falsetto performance, like someone who inadvertently betrays their emotions with variations in pitch as they talk. The production that surrounds this delivery has a restrained sense of experimentation, a series of glitchy melodies in the song’s bridge creating a textural, IDM and crunchy hip-hop influenced sound.
Overall, Derek Simpson has created something equally tuned into the head and heart — an emotionally resonant song that is also intellectually stimulating. Simpson’s lyrics are an exploration of the vulnerability that comes with love, feeling exposed whilst also compelled, as he describes:
‘It’s an unsafe place you go to when you allow yourself to be in love. You’re putting clothes on and taking clothes off trying to imagine how your beloved will see you. You’re on exhibition all the time. And no matter your choices, you’re exposed. Right before you remember to breathe out & inevitably everything takes care of itself, the magic will disorient you.’