L.A.’s Samo Sound Boy is a member of the Marshawn Lynch school of electronic producers — artists who repeat one vocal hook ad nauseam, raising the emotional stakes with each cycle. Caribou popularized this style with his album Our Love, on which he whispered “can’t do without you” with the intimacy of a coffeehouse folkie. Samo, meanwhile, screams “WHAT CAN I DO” at the top of a burnt-out skyscraper for the whole town to hear, presumably on his knees in a tattered shirt.
But it’s not his voice, but rather a vocal sample. Samo’s sound, as displayed on his debut album Begging Please, is built around these — simple mantras, culled from soul and gospel, that seem to be sung by a thousand people at once. One could make a compelling argument that these samples aren’t representative of real emotion in that they’re borrowed from someone else’s catharsis. But everything on Begging Please feels physical: slamming drum patterns, blaring synths, and even a tinny, well-worn-sounding piano similar to Aphex Twin’s.  In this context, these samples barely scan as digital wizardry.
This maximalism resembles that of EDM, and “Baby Don’t Stop,” with its mawkish 1-4 progression and brooding piano, even resembles big-festival indie pop. But the greatest strength of Begging Please is how it makes these giant sounds feel introspective. This music’s too confusing for parties, too abrasive for dorm rooms, but it works like hell over headphones. This is music designed to directly bombard the listener.
This might make Begging Please hard to get into.  Though Samo thankfully limited the record to 44 minutes — two of them taken up by the sort of amorphous intro I generally find gratuitous, but which works here — it’s still a bit much. Most of these songs build endlessly before dropping off into some synth drones; the title track is especially frustrating in that nearly half is ambient noodling, and it teases a return to the main hook at the end but doesn’t deliver.
“What Can I Do” circumvents this issue with its thrilling, unpredictable structure. But it doesn’t have the raw catharsis of the other songs’ massive buildups. This sheds light on the album’s core flaw and contradiction: the more successful a Samo track, the harder it is to listen to. Begging Please isn’t a bad album by any means. It’s just one that demands a certain mood from the listener. This is music you listen to when subtler fare won’t work and you just need to feel something, now.