Last year, Cole M. Greif-Neill (the sometimes-guitarist for Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti and one-third of the Samps) made a simple admission in an interview with Vice about his sample-based collective: "I can tell you that we have no idea what we're doing." On the surface, we could take him at his word. Here are three Californians taking time out from their other bands to put together a little EP, often via web, with no desire to play any of the material in a live setting. Often, this sort of homemade pleasure project can be a little too indulgent, and as long as the day job is working out, there's really little risk. But The Samps is a tight, wonderfully nuanced little outing where all that pleasure really shines through. Each experimental element here is firmly supported by genuine grooves and an ability to distill a variety of pop genres-- from cartoonish electronics to hammy disco boogie-- to their gratifying essences. And even if the result is sometimes unrefined, it's anything but uninformed.
For a debut that packs such a punch, it's a little surprising that it runs for all of about 15 minutes, including two schizoid interludes that work as intros to each side. But with the four tracks that remain-- complete with retrograded funk and R&B, chintzy video game noises, and the occasional glam rock pose-- it feels as if the guys have hand-picked the highlights from some non-existent long player. Each of these tracks could be a standout single. So instead of faulting The Samps for being a too short, you could also look at it like the weeding has already been done for you.
Though these songs are accessible, there's still room for a little tinkering and some full-blown left turns into the strange. Take "Hyperbolic", which starts as a springy, robotic B-boy jam and pulls a U-turn right into a blippy lite-rave track. These head-turning shifts provide some insight into how these tracks were crafted. Sometimes this interplay obstructs the groove, as a perfectly hooky concoction is hijacked and reworked as a result of another member taking the reigns and reinterpreting the sounds and ideas. While this kind of collaborative process might not make for a terribly smooth listen, it surely creates a more dynamic-- and ultimately more engaging-- space for these tripped-out grooves to incubate in.
