Oh No is a producer from Oxnard, who burst onto the scene as a solo artist in 2004 when he released The Disrupt on Stones Throw. Over the years, he’s given us a myriad of projects and produced for the likes of Declaime, LMNO, Moka Only, Percee P, and Guilty Simpson, just to name a few. His most recent project came just last year, when he teamed up with Chilean artist Hordatoj to release an EP called Al Amanecer. Now he’s back with a new instrumental project, Good Vibes.

Good Vibes is a fairly straightforward project from Oh No, which sees him reworking the music of Roy Ayers. While this is a short project, with nine tracks coming in under eighteen minutes, Oh No has already promised that this is just volume one, so we can expect at least one more installment in this series. That said, Oh No is a talented veteran producer, and what could have been a simple beat tape becomes much more complex than that in his hands. It’s not technically a very long project, but Oh No is so creative in his sample flips and the way he recontextualizes Ayers’ music and makes it his own, it’s easy to get lost in the music and forget what you’re doing for a few minutes, because you’re two busy vibing out and enjoying the journey. Oh No does what few producers can do with this type of project, which is to be so creative in taking a well-sampled jazz musician and push things to where you as a listener aren’t sure where the music is going to go next. It’s so exciting that you’re willing to just press play and let the music go wherever Oh No is going to take it.

Good Vibes is one of these projects that shows you just how good a producer like Oh No is. Any producer could put out a beat tape based on Roy Ayers samples and it would have been just fine, but probably forgettable. When Oh No comes at this project, he is so creative with the construction of his beats that the project becomes completely unpredictable, and he demonstrates how great and varied your instrumental hip hop beats can be when you put in the work and push yourself to not just fall back on the same old boom bap or downtempo beats we’ve heard a million times before.