Stream Samo Sound Boy Begging Please

Stream Samo Sound Boy Begging Please

Begging Please is an album that will come to you when you need it. Maybe you don’t need it right now, or maybe you do. It doesn’t really matter. Sculpted after Marvin Gaye’s iconic ode to lost love Here, My Dear, the grace and speed of Begging Please emulates the pacing of a relationship and its demise in a heady narrative of house music and soul samples. The body-cranking builds and drops never drag on a moment too long. The exuberant “Baby Don’t Stop” stutters through the awkward missteps of early-crush-adrenaline, punctuated by percussive blasts. It’s followed by “Feel Something,” a taut, rubber twist punctuated by percussive blasts — desire that’s almost physical in its aching. Gaye conveyed his love, lust, loss, and despair mostly in lyric, but Begging Please accomplishes this same end almost entirely through beats, synths, or samples. “You Come For Me” hints at a connection beyond consciousness — love like the alien, impossible escape that electronic music has so long promised. Later, when that hopefulness slips away, you don’t so much hear his sense of loss as feel it course through your body.

There are hints of TNGHT’s maximalism and Zedd’s EDM-pop inklings, but Samo Sound Boy’s closest kin in electronic music is still DJ Dodger Stadium, the duo he formed with Jerome LOL a few years ago. “Save Wait Time” and “Begging Please” function similarly to “Love Songs,” burying warped, repeated vocal phrases that assume new meaning or inflection with each repetition, as the shifting production changes them from soulful to desperate and back again. By the time the gloomy, stricken “What Can I Do” rolls around, Samo Sound Boy is out on his own, combining a whole choir and a baleful bass line into buzzy, sinuous sympathy that still falls short. This is a record that will only really make sense to you if you’ve felt the earth-shattering failure of a fucking great relationship — and if you haven’t yet, I hope you’ll remember to look this record up when you need it. Begging Please isn’t just a salve for the broken-hearted though, it’s an album that proves electronic music’s propensity toward emotional depth once and for all. Listen below.

Begging Please is out 4/28 via Body High. Pre-order it here.

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