Listen: RC30s by Derek Simpson

Following on from previous singles Wonka and Saturn Returns, Derek Simpson is back with a new single, as he releases each track from his forthcoming third LP, Somehow, week-by-week. This is Simpson’s third time appearing on BlackPlastic.co.uk since April, making him one of my most consistently featured artists of 2024.

Somehow is ‘an examination of falling in love’, each track exploring a romantic experience. As is the trademark of his sound, RC30s blends subtle experimental electronics with guitars and soft, emotional vocals that explore the experience of human connection. RC30s depicts the kind of evening where two romantic lovers feel absorbed in one another’s presence. The sound is intoxicating and entrancing — a perfect sonic depiction of the experience of infatuation.

Hand claps, low slung bass stabs and falsetto vocals give RC30s a playful sexiness, Simpson’s open invitation to ‘call me if you’d like’ desperately trying, and failing, to be casual. Looped guitars, presumably leveraging the RC-30 loop pedal, create a dream-like, hazy quality, and the overall effect is spellbinding. Simpson creates the beautiful joy of finding deep human connection.

Listen: Saturn Returns by Derek Simpson

Having already built up over five-million streams and placement within several TV shows, LA-based musician Derek Simpson is rapidly building up a following. Whilst Simpson pursues a singer-songwriter style, as opposed to leveraging acoustic guitars or piano, he assembles his songs like a collage, from samples, and fragments of his own prior unused musical work.

On Saturn Returns, Simpson has created a softly mutating piece of melodic pop. Muted guitar supports hushed vocals, creating a spectral, cosmic atmosphere befitting the song’s title. As the song gradually slides into its chorus, taut, digital bass provides a spacious, elastic feeling. Small melodic details twinkly in the song’s background like stars in the sky. Overall, Derek has created a beautiful, layered and distinctive sounding song that leaves me feeling like I am floating in space.

Saturn Returns is lifted from Derek’s Simpson’s new album, Somehow. Each of the album’s ten songs will be released as consecutive singles, each Thursday for ten weeks, starting with Saturn Returns. Check it out below:

Watch: Wonka by Derek Simpson

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.’