{"title":"SML","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"small-medium-large-3","title":"Small Medium Large","description":"\u003cp\u003eSML is bassist Anna Butterss (Jeff Parker, Daniel Villarreal, Makaya McCraven), synthesist Jeremiah Chiu (Ariel Kalma, Marta Sofia-Honer), saxophonist Josh Johnson (Jeff Parker, Makaya McCraven, Nate Mercereau, Marquis Hill), percussionist Booker Stardrum (Amirtha Kidambi, Carl Stone, Lee Ranaldo, Patrick Shiroishi), and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann (Sam Wilkes, Meg Duffy, Perfume Genius). Their debut album Small Medium Large began as a collection of long-form improvisations recorded during two separate two-night stands at beloved Highland Park venue ETA, a major development site for the burgeoning new LA jazz \u0026amp; improvised music sound, which unfortunately closed its doors permanently at the end of 2023.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe venue, perhaps best known outside of LA for Jeff Parker’s 2022 album Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, was the perfect location for the start of SML, especially given that both bassist Anna Buterss and saxophonist Josh Johnson are in the quartet featured on that record. Small Medium Large was engineered and recorded in stereo direct to Nagra by Bryce Gonzales and compiled, arranged, and edited with additional production, recording, and studio composition by SML. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhile editing, chopping, and rearranging stereo mixed improvisations is hardly a new concept (for a modern and relevant example we can look to Makaya McCraven’s output on IARC) these results are a stunning expansion of the Teo Macero \/ Miles Davis editing concept explored on classics like Bitches Brew, On The Corner, and Get Up With It. Stylistically though, these recordings have more in common with the proto trance repetitions of Harmonia, and with Holgar Czukay’s re-assemblage technique used in his work with Can. Throw in a supremely intuitive utilization of Susumu Yokota’s floating patterns polyrhythm concept and we have a truly entrancing take on time-clocked electronic rhythms augmenting with live percussion, yet maintaining that elusive human sway. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"International Anthem Recording Co","offers":[{"title":"Orange LP","offer_id":50433720680779,"sku":"2201081","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50433720058187,"sku":"2201080","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50433719566667,"sku":"2201079","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/e51dfb5a-16da-f11c-bd11-9267071b1fb8_54373536_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726882386"},{"product_id":"how-you-been","title":"How You Been","description":"\u003cp\u003eSML is the quintet of bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann. Their second album, \u003cem\u003eHow You Been\u003c\/em\u003e, finds the supergroup of prolific composer\/producers pushing ever further into the hyperrealist, collectivist approach to music creation nascently explored on their debut \u003cem\u003eSmall Medium Large\u003c\/em\u003e, which was lauded as \"awe-inspiring\" by Glide, \"exuberant\" by the Los Angeles Times, and \"an exciting milestone\" by Pitchfork.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eHow You Been\u003c\/em\u003e represents a breakthrough in the musical language of the group. This new work was crafted via extensive post-production of recorded improvisations from a handful of shows in a similar fashion to their debut, but whereas \u003cem\u003eSmall Medium Large\u003c\/em\u003e was constructed from analog tapes of the band's very first (and very modest) shows at bygone Highland Park LA venue ETA, \u003cem\u003eHow You Been\u003c\/em\u003e was built with a far higher level of self-awareness and a far deeper pool of source material. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs SML has evolved and spread out in space-time, their fluencies, both as an improvising unit in performance and as a production team in the studio, have sharpened. At inception the band inspired disparate but distinctive artist comparisons like Essential Logic, Oval, Herbie Hancock's Sextant, and electric Miles Davis, as well as assorted genre touchpoints like Afrobeat, kosmiche, proto-techno and new-jazz. With \u003cem\u003eHow You Been\u003c\/em\u003e their work manages t o both collapse and explode such derivatives, displaying a new, high resolution version of SML, fully-flowered into a new strain of sound, bound to incite its own copycats in due time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"SML might signal a new iteration of jazz, or it might not be jazz at all, or it might not matter.\" – Pitchfork\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's important to note that SML's sound wasn't created in a vacuum. The band is part of an extensive community of creative musicians who collaborate in a multitude of ways, and that community has proven to be essential to a growing family tree of innovative, genre-expanding music. Los Angeles in the 2020s is a musical Petridish in the same way that Cologne \u0026amp; Dusseldorf were for the birth of Krautrock; Canterbury for progressive rock in late-60s; NYC for No Wave \u0026amp; the Downtown sound in the late 70s and 80s; Chicago for genreless, Tortoise-adjacent sounds in the 90s. The musicians of SML represent the core of a new school within the Los Angeles jazz and improvised music scene that seems to breed infinitely overlapping combinations, including Jeff Parker's ETA IVtet, the Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes trio, Anna Butters's own band (as heard on 2024's Mighty Vertebrate), and various other solo and ensemble projects encompassing every single member of the SML, respectively.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"International Anthem Recording Co","offers":[{"title":"LP - Plankton","offer_id":53456910844235,"sku":"R5037-5678","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":53456910811467,"sku":"R5037-3766","price":26.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":53456910778699,"sku":"R5037-4540","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/unnamed-2025-09-23T142014.959.jpg?v=1758633622"},{"product_id":"spontaneous-music-live","title":"Spontaneous Music Live","description":"\u003cp\u003eSML is a Los Angeles based quintet featuring Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Josh Johnson, Booker Stardrum, and Gregory Uhlmann.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpontaneous Music Live contains two side-length pieces of unedited improvisation, recorded live at Los Angeles venue Zebulon during SML's December 2025 three-night residency, just weeks after the release of the band's second album\u003cem\u003e How You Been\u003c\/em\u003e. It was recorded and mixed live to stereo tape by Bryce Gonzales (the same engineer\/wizard known for his gorgeous live captures\/mixes of Jeff Parker's ETA IVtet).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBetween \u003cem\u003eHow You Been\u003c\/em\u003e and their 2024 debut\u003cem\u003e Small Medium Large\u003c\/em\u003e (both of which were heavily edited, shaped and post-produced) the band has developed a reputation for records that are heavily fused, polished, and punchy. The medium is on full post-modern display on those LPs, and the band’s post-production knife can be responsible for much of the perspective—the tastiest morsels collected, arranged, and rearranged just so.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the source material from both those albums were live recordings. Longform, unwieldy, ebbing and flowing. On top of that, every performance the band has ever done has been fully improvised in that spirit. So in the sphere of live performance the band’s esteem has grown down a different path—one of linear, hypnotic, expansion. It’s a perceived split persona shared by some of SML’s most inspiring conceptual bedfellows: compare the extended madness of Can’s Live in Paris 1973 to the relative tight form of Future Days from the same year; the speed-funk chaos of Miles Davis’ Dark Magus to the heavily deconstructed On The Corner or Big Fun.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpontaneous Music Live removes the curatorial perspective and pulls the curtain back on that search-pluck-reconstruct editing process. What we’re left with is the psychedelic realism of the band in situ, in their home town, collectively improvising, fully in-the-moment, mining for that moment of discovery. We hear, in macro, each nugget of sound which could be the basis for a future SML album track, spattered amongst the collective chaos-and-control like stars in the night sky.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"International Anthem","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":57295858532683,"sku":"R0746-9047","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/url-1_836e4e72-1993-492d-b566-3b0de7897815.jpg?v=1778686051"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/de\/collections\/sml.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}