The first SML record – last year’s brilliant Small Medium Large – helped to strengthen a fruitful two-way pipeline between Chicago and LA, an inter-city relationship that the International Anthem label seems keen to encourage. And why not? Between them, the two cities have some of America’s richest musical heritage, particularly in terms of jazz, improvisation and the avant garde. Leaning into the heritage of both locations and coming up with an album that transcended geography to move into the more cosmic reaches of spiritual jazz, SML proved themselves worthy ambassadors of a new form of music while paying subtle homage to Miles Davis and Can.
SML are a quintet comprising International Anthem stalwarts Anna Butterss (electric bass), Jeremiah Chiu (various synths, live sampling, percussion), Josh Johnson (saxophone, electronics, synths), Booker Stardrum (drums, percussion) and Gregory Uhlmann (guitar, effects, sampler, electronics). On How You Been they perfect the collaging technique they introduced on their debut. Where those early experiments in stitching together compositions from fragments of live shows represented perfect examples of learning on the job, How You Been is a more measured, planned affair, the result of another year spent learning from each other and touring widely.
Consequently, these tracks sound both more complex and more intuitive: practice doesn’t just hone technical skill, it allows for bonds to build up between musicians, and those bonds are of the greatest importance where improvised music is concerned. And although the recordings were planned, their musical direction was not. SML’s improvisatory urge remains as strong as ever, as can be seen on tracks like Chicago Four, where electronic and percussive sounds bounce off each other, seeming to gain energy as they go, before Uhlmann’s guitar glides in, brisk and muscular but gloriously idiosyncratic. All this plays off against thick sheets of synthesised melody.
The quintet know instinctively how and when to work a groove. Taking Out the Trash moves quickly from space-age synths to gritty, organic minimalism, full of bite and movement and funk, and ends with a rampant sax solo from Johnson. Stepping In / The Loop provides a wonderful centrepiece, with a delicious tension between chaotic rhythms, bright synth chords and the most minimal of refrains. This is improvised music at its most engaging, its most immediate.
As on the first album, variety is a key ingredient for SML. Old Mytth has a slowburning, creeping percussive undercurrent and topnotes of stippled sax and pointillist electronics that dovetail into a mystical, cinematic end section. Brood Board Shroom creates a soft-focus marshmallow world, alien but welcoming, somewhere between the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and the spacier end of krautrock.
The quintet have a knack for creating depth, and they do it in a number of different ways. Chicago Three is a beguiling mass of melodic synths and metronomic, ticking percussion, Daves is a honking sax workout over rhythms that squelch and scuttle. Everywhere you look there are polyrhythms, hidden complexities, multiple melodies vying for position or supporting each other. The bustling title track takes its percussive lead from hip-hop, then runs with it in two directions at once, somehow meeting in the middle again to form a tight core of jazz-funk. Even the briefest pieces, barely a minute long, are bursting with ideas: the flutterings and warblings of Plankton, the chopped and degraded electronics of opener Gutteral Utterance. By the time the future-funk/lounge-groove closing track Mouth Words comes round to ease you into oblivion, it’s clear SML have created another special album, one that forges bright new pathways in American jazz.
How You Been (November 7th, 2025) International Anthem
Bandcamp: https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/how-you-been
UPCOMING SHOWS
Live Oak FL – Friday October 31st – Hulaween
London UK – Thursday November 20th – Church of Sound
Los Angeles CA – Monday December 1st – Zebulon
Los Angeles CA – Tuesday December 2nd – Zebulon
Philadelphia PA – Thursday December 11th – Solar Myth
Brooklyn NY – Friday December 12th – The Sultan Room
Brooklyn NY – Saturday December 13th – The Sultan Room
Chicago IL – Sunday December 14th – Thalia Hall