About

SML is a Los Angeles based quintet featuring Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Josh Johnson, Booker Stardrum, and Gregory Uhlmann.

'Spontaneous 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 HOW YOU BEEN. It was recorded and mixed live to analog tape by Bryce Gonzales (the same engineer/wizard known for his gorgeous live captures/mixes of Jeff Parker's ETA IVtet).

Between HOW YOU BEEN and their 2024 debut SMALL MEDIUM LARGE (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.

But the source material from both those albums were live recordings. Long-form, 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'.

'Spontaneous 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. — (via Label)

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Spontaneous Music Live is particularly noteworthy, as, until now, the group’s only recordings have emerged via a highly unusual process. The band has never convened in a studio, doesn’t rehearse, and avoids discussing whatever it’s going to play (outside of rinsing Live at the Plugged Nickel and Sextant before sets to get in the zone). SML simply record what happens onstage, then take turns editing and reassembling the results into the short, oddball collages that make up their first two albums. Given the group’s dedication to live performance, the raw material itself is obviously the soul of this music. Spontaneous Music Live documents that three-night Zebulon stint from late last year in two side-long chunks, roughly 24 minutes apiece. Captured and mixed by ETA’s resident recording wizard, Bryce Gonzales, it’s a thrilling snapshot of the quintet riding a joyous high.

While SML’s actual performances can go quite a bit further afield—they certainly did at these shows, with the set they played after the stretch captured on this “Roundabouts” recording eventually breaking down into a YMO-like fantasia of chirping laboratory boops—Spontaneous Music Live documents SML’s current sound at its fizziest and most feel-good. There’s more than a spoonful of tried-and-true krautrock in the stew here, but there are also glimpses of their more exploratory journeys: Consider how “The Drums” eventually moseys onto a sultry groove reminiscent of Ethiopian jazz, or how Uhlmann pulls the back half of “Roundabouts” into a tunnel vision of robotically muted 16th notes. SML are yanking on numerous tendrils that have been snaking their way through L.A. the last few years—ambient jazz, new-age fusion, slackery experimentalism played with professional chops—and channeling them all into a wondrous bloom of color. Jazz may have been the launching point, but the destination is clearly still up in the air. — (via Pitchfork)

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Label: International Anthem Recording Company
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Released: 2026
Genre: Electronic, Jazz
Style: Experimental

File under: International Anthem Recording Company
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