Today, LA-based quintet SML (bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, drummer Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann) share the track and video for “Chicago Four” from the new album How You Been, out November 7 via International Anthem. The group will also be on a run of shows across fall 2025, including performances at Hulaween in Florida, Church of Sound in London, Thalia Hall in Chicago, a two-night stand at Los Angeles venue Zebulon, and more.

Listen to “Chicago Four” and preorder How You Been here.

“Chicago Four” uses a live recording from treasured Chicago haunt The Empty Bottle as its foundation. The track starts with interlocking synth and percussion loops before Uhlmann’s wobble-effected electric guitar melody and Butterss’s picked bass counterpoint enter. Stardrum’s swinging traps then slide in, catching up to a couple of added percussion layers, before Johnson adds distorted chordal hits that sound like hard horn samples from a golden era Bomb Squad or Rakim beat. It all intertwines perfectly and makes an otherworldly vehicle for Johnson and Chiu’s cascading keyed melody, which soars above and between, complimenting either side of a hypnotically shifting, infectiously repeating modulation.

Watch the video for “Chicago Four,” by Nespy5euro, here.

SML’s second album How You Been finds the supergroup of prolific composer/producers pushing further into the hyperrealist, collectivist approach to music creation nascently explored on their 2024 debut Small Medium Large (which was lauded as “awe-inspiring” by Glide, “exuberant” by the Los Angeles Times, and “an exciting milestone” by Pitchfork).

How You Been represents a breakthrough in the musical language of the group. It was crafted via extensive post-production of recordings from a handful of shows in a similar fashion to their debut, but whereas Small Medium Large was constructed from analog tapes of the band’s very first (and very modest) shows at bygone Highland Park LA venue ETA, this new album was built with a higher level of self-awareness and a far deeper pool of source material. Behind the thrust of the first album’s success, the band approached every performance in late 2024 and early 2025 as a generative opportunity to hone their sound and document their expansion across a new landscape of audiences, venues, and cities. Despite the premeditation driving their commitment to record every moment, the band started every show without musical direction, improvising intuitively, completely.

As SML evolved and spread out in space-time, their fluencies – both as an improvising unit in performance and as a production team in the studio – 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 How You Been their work manages to 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.

It’s important to note, however, 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 Petri dish in the same way that Cologne & Dusseldorf were for the birth of Krautrock; Canterbury for progressive rock in the late 60s; NYC for No Wave & the Downtown sounds of 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 (which features Butterss and Johnson) and Expansion Trio (which features Chiu), Uhlmann & Johnson’s trio with Sam Wilkes, Anna Butterss’s own band (which includes Uhlmann and Johnson, as heard on 2024’s Mighty Vertebrate), and various other solo and ensemble projects encompassing every single member of the SML, respectively.

Lead single “Taking Out the Trash,” which also came via animated video by Nespy5euro, is a perfect pace-setter for How You Been – a punchy nugget encapsulating the essence of SML. Chiu’s percussion synth establishes the groove before Stardrum and Butterss drop in on a heavy breakbeat. Uhlmann comes in with a searing, plucked staccato funk line on his guitar that would give Glenn Branca and Larry Coryell something to high five about. Things eventually trip into a total breakdown, with only the perc synth still looping. When the band explodes back in, the key has changed, and Johnson is letting loose on a wailing, distorted saxophone solo. Watch the video & listen to “Taking Out the Trash” here.

LIVE DATES

Live Oak FL – Friday October 31st – Hulaween – tickets
London UK – Thursday November 20th – Church of Sound
Los Angeles CA – Monday December 1st – Zebulon – tickets
Los Angeles CA – Tuesday December 2nd – Zebulon – tickets
Philadelphia PA – Thursday December 11th – Solar Myth – tickets
Brooklyn NY – Friday December 12th – The Sultan Room – tickets
Brooklyn NY – Saturday December 13th – The Sultan Room – tickets
Chicago IL – Sunday December 14th – Thalia Hall – tickets
San Diego CA – Wednesday February 25th – The Loft @ UCSD – tickets
San Francisco CA – Thursday February 26th – SF JAZZ Joe Henderson Lab – tickets
San Francisco CA – Friday February 27th – SF JAZZ Joe Henderson Lab – tickets
Knoxville TN – Thursday March 26th – Big Ears Festival (3 night residency) – tickets
Knoxville TN – Friday March 27th – Big Ears Festival (3 night residency) – tickets
Knoxville TN – Saturday March 28th – Big Ears Festival (3 night residency) – tickets