Most artists making synth-forward music in 2025 are working in one of two modes: they’re either chasing lo-fi nostalgia, leaning into grit and warmth as aesthetic markers, or they’re going clinical — polished to the point of sterility, using vintage sounds as window dressing on something fundamentally cold. Cole Lumpkin is doing neither, and “Wreckage,” his new single is the rare track that understands exactly what analog synthesis is actually for.
Produced by Lumpkin and Will Ross, “Wreckage” is built almost exclusively around two instruments: the Yamaha TX7 and the Oberheim Matrix 6R. That’s it. For most of the track’s architecture, you’re hearing two synthesizers doing the heavy lifting — and the choice is telling. These aren’t the warmest, most immediately flattering tools in the box. The TX7 in particular is notoriously challenging: FM synthesis requires a different kind of thinking, a willingness to work with the physics of modulation rather than against them. Lumpkin clearly knows his machines. The bassline he’s sculpted from a TX7 patch carries the shimmer and harmonic complexity that only FM can deliver, touched by echoes of Michael Jackson’s Bad-era production — music that was itself revolutionary in its use of the DX7 (the TX7’s voice-expanded sibling) to make something that felt simultaneously futuristic and deeply human.
The bass is then layered with an octave-shifted guitar run through Neural DSP’s John Mayer plugin — a decision that blurs the line between instrument categories in a genuinely productive way. What you end up with is a low-end that doesn’t just sit in a register, it moves, carrying with it the organic micro-variations of a fretted instrument and the tonal character of a carefully-designed FM patch. It’s a sleight of hand that rewards attentive listening.
The drums deserve particular attention. Rooted in Afro-Cuban rhythmic traditions but shaped by the ’80s pop shuffle and grounded by four-on-the-floor elements, they manage to feel ancient and modern simultaneously. The hi-fi percussion work — crisp, wide, present without being harsh — draws a clear line to the production philosophy that made records like Off the Wall and Thriller feel so spatially alive. Live drums, tracked at Lounge Studios in NYC, add an additional layer of organic texture, particularly in the bridge section, where the track pivots toward something more Kaytranada-influenced: looser, more groove-forward, summer-lit.
This is a record made by someone who is thinking in complete sentences. Every production decision in “Wreckage” serves the emotional arc of a song that is, at its core, about the specific ache of being drawn to someone whose energy you can’t contain. Lumpkin’s self-produced, self-mixed approach means there’s no gap between intention and execution — what he heard in his head is, as far as you can tell, what came out. That’s rarer than it should be and it’s worth paying close attention to whatever he does next.
