Derivatives

Listening to Derivatives feels like watching a familiar landscape transform under the glow of a streetlamp. William Fitzsimmons has always been a master of the quietest possible intimacy, but here, that intimacy is refracted through a digital lens. The album takes the raw, bleeding heart of his previous work and wraps it in protective layers of synthesizers, glitchy percussion, and expansive reverb. It is a record that exists in the liminal space between the organic and the synthetic, where a delicate acoustic guitar line can suddenly be swallowed by a warm wave of electronic bass.