SML *live

SML (International Anthem Recording Company/US) *live*

SML: Jazz meets the future

SML is a quintet made up of greats from Los Angeles' thriving jazz, improvisation and indie music scene. Here, jazz is not simply played, but disassembled, looped, reassembled and transformed in real time. With SML, the whole thing sometimes sounds like a driving groove, sometimes like fragmented samples, sometimes the line between guitar, synthesizer and studio editing is completely blurred. The musicians deliberately avoid show effects and focus on simplicity and repetition rather than elaborate solos. The focus is on the common pulse: the rhythmic collective, the hypnotic repetition, the groove is above all else. The band draws inspiration from a wide range of references - from the style-defining jazz records of Miles Davis in the 1970s to German avant-garde rock bands such as Can and Faust to the sample artistry and creaking syncopation of J Dilla as well as L.A. institutions such as Brainfeeder Records and the long-standing club series Low End Theory.

Their debut album, Small Medium Large, was recorded at the band's first gigs in late 2022 and early 2023, reworked the following year and released in the summer of 2024 - an album described as "impressive" by Glide, "exuberant" by the Los Angeles Times and an "exciting milestone" by Pitchfork. On her second album "How You Been" (2025), SML pushes this collectivist, process-oriented approach even further.

Her various spheres of influence, which include names such as Essential Logic, Oval, Herbie Hancock's "Sextant" as well as aesthetic points of reference from Afrobeat, cosmic music, proto-techno and new jazz, are not simply re-bundled on "How You Been", but transcended. The result is a further developed, high-resolution version of SML - a sound that sees itself less as a style than as a continuing sound practice and thus already points to future after-effects.

SML are Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Josh Johnson, Booker Stardrum, Gregory Uhlmann

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