Co La: No No

Sampling isn't a lost art form just yet, but it's fair to call it a diminished one. This has happened even as the sample itself remains a staple of modern music production: how Young Chop has access to an orchestra, how every bedroom producer from Los Angeles to Berlin owns an 808. Those sounds are meticulously recorded and integrated into popular software. Sampling itself—the act of sourcing, manipulating, and arranging previously recorded sound—is more esoteric; certainly there are fewer producers rewriting the history of jazz and funk (DJ Premier, the Bomb Squad) or expanding the cosmic vistas of the dance floor (the KLF, the Orb). The practice remains more common in dance music, but it's still notable when someone returns to the old methods, and licensing concerns crowd many out. Instead, sampling has followed a path opposite that of most musical trends: from the unobtainable feel of early studio instruments to widespread pop deployment to the obscure and niche.

Baltimore's Co La belongs to a shrinking group of composers—Flying Lotus and Bibio among them—for whom sampling remains a singular muse. His last album, Moody Coup, was a genteel patter that stitched together everything from ASMR-like frivolity to reggae toasting. His third-ish album (he's had several cassette and low-run releases) and second for Software, No No, arrives with a harsher mandate, aiming to explore the banging, echoing sounds of the club. This makes for a louder, tenser listen, even as Co La's methods remain largely unchanged: all of No No's sounds are recognizable, or at least conceivable. There's nothing truly alien here, and you'd always feel comfortable at least guessing at a sound's source.

Increasingly, those sources are drums, or things that sound mostly like drums. There's a lot of diffuse banging on No No—only rarely does a deep kick-like sound arrive on time—and it sounds like Co La is one of a growing pool of producers inspired by the rhythmic daring of artists like Pearson Sound and Jam City. This manifests itself in tracks such as "Crank", which rises from a clutch of voices into a surprising, hands-in-the-air throb, and "Gush", which revels in a suspended state before perforating the bubble with rapid bursts of percussion.

Of course, No No isn't dance music; Co La seems unwilling to commit to that level of structure. So while you could see a deft turntable hand or a devout remixer turning this club-ready, there are lots of potent moments ("No No") and transfixing loops ("Barricade"'s pitched dollops) that are abandoned too quickly. Elsewhere, as on opener "Squeeze", the percussive elements feel placed at random, and the track, untethered, scatters away. I miss the gentleness of Moody Coup, and when the latter half of "Tragedy" opens up with a laughing voice and a rich piano lament I realize how stern and abrasive much of No No sounds.

That's probably intentional, given the playfulness that's baked into Co La's methods and sound sources. This is avant-garde music at its core, and the precision with which these sources are treated and deployed means Co La probably has more in common with, say, Steve Reich than with DJ Premier. No No asks a lot of listeners, that we unpack all of these fun inferences even as we're being assaulted by the 143 different sounds Co La casted into the vestige of a snare drum. No No, on balance, is worth the effort.