© 2026. SML. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. © 2026. HELICOPTER RECORDS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
© 2025. CORD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
SML - HOW YOU BEEN (VINYL)
SML은 베이시스트 Anna Butterss, 신디사이저 연주자 Jeremiah Chiu, 색소포니스트 Josh Johnson, 퍼커셔니스트 Booker Stardrum, 기타리스트 Gregory Uhlmann으로 이루어진 퀸텟이다. 두 번째 앨범 《How You Been》에서 이들은 데뷔작 《Small Medium Large》에서 탐구했던 집단적이고 초현실적인 음악 제작 방식을 한층 더 밀어붙인다.
이번 앨범은 라이브 공연 녹음을 기반으로 extensive한 후반 작업을 거쳐 완성되었다. 데뷔작이 LA Highland Park의 작은 공연장 ETA에서 열린 초기 공연들을 바탕으로 만들어졌다면, 《How You Been》은 훨씬 더 넓어진 공연 경험과 축적된 감각 속에서 탄생했다. 밴드는 2024년 말과 2025년 초의 공연들을 하나의 생성적 실험처럼 다루며, 모든 연주를 녹음했다. 그러나 공연마다 사전에 정해진 방향은 없었고, 모든 음악은 직관적인 즉흥 연주에서 시작되었다.
SML은 공연과 스튜디오 작업 양쪽 모두에서 더욱 정교한 언어를 발전시켰다. 초기에는 Essential Logic, Oval, Herbie Hancock의 《Sextant》, 전기 시기의 Miles Davis 같은 비교가 따라붙었고, Afrobeat·코스미셰·프로토 테크노·뉴재즈 등의 영향도 언급되었다. 하지만 《How You Been》에서는 그러한 참조들을 해체하면서도 확장해, 완전히 새로운 SML만의 사운드를 만들어낸다.
이들의 음악은 현재 LA 실험·즉흥 음악 신(Scene)의 흐름 속에서 탄생했다. 이는 과거 크라우트록 시기의 쾰른과 뒤셀도르프, 노 웨이브 시대의 뉴욕, 혹은 90년대 시카고와 비견될 만한 창조적 환경으로 묘사된다. SML 멤버들은 다양한 프로젝트와 협업을 통해 서로 연결되어 있으며, 그 집단적 네트워크 자체가 음악의 중요한 기반이 되고 있다.
앨범 수록곡들은 즉흥성과 세밀한 편집 감각이 공존한다. 「Chicago Four」는 시카고 공연장 The Empty Bottle에서의 라이브 녹음을 바탕으로, 반복되는 신시사이저와 퍼커션 루프 위에 기타와 색소폰이 겹쳐지며 최면적인 흐름을 만든다. 「Brood Board SHROOM」은 앰비언트와 자유로운 리듬이 뒤섞인 몽환적 공간을 만들고, 「Taking Out the Trash」는 브레이크비트와 펑크적 기타 리프가 결합된 강렬한 댄스 트랙으로 전개된다. 마지막 곡 「Mouth Words」는 느린 4/4 그루브 속에서 앨범 전체를 차분하게 마무리한다.
SML is the quintet of bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann. Their second album, How You Been, finds the supergroup of prolific composer/producers pushing ever further into the hyperrealist, collectivist approach to music creation nascently explored on their 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. This new work 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, How You Been 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. Within every performance is an impressive display of the band’s total trust in one another and confidence in their own instincts.
As 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 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.
“SML might signal a new iteration of jazz, or it might not be jazz at all, or it might not matter.” - Pitchfork
It’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 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 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 and Expansion Trio, the Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes trio, Anna Butterss’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.
On How You Been the curatorial challenge of the capture-cut production employed by SML is met by the delightful happenstance of each member being a seasoned producer on their own merit. Accordingly, SML’s perspective on what is a moment to expand upon with the post-producer’s knife and glue is five-strong. Each member’s proclivities, penchants, and predelections get their chance to filter the always-evolving elements of the group concept.
“Chicago Four” uses a live recording from treasured Chicago haunt The Empty Bottle as its foundation. It begins with interlocking synth and percussion loops before the entry of Uhlmann’s wobble-effected electric guitar melody and Butterss’s picked bass counterpoint. Stardrum’s swinging traps 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.
“Brood Board SHROOM” is a temporary touchdown on an alien planet where rhythm moves in timeless, breath-like undulations, with repetitions cut from a very different cloth than the lock-step polyrhythmic grooves of “Chicago Four.” The track’s opening lines evoke the soft throbs of the beloved ambient works of Aphex Twin (or perhaps a Robitussen-drenched take on Steve Reich’s Different Trains), before frothy curtains of textured sound drape into the mix, overlaying like distant, minimalist symphonies in a gentle, synthetic recreation of free time — slackening and accelerating as each layer of tonal pulses hovers to front-and-center or retreats into the distance. It’s a gut feeling rather than an academic exercise, and it’s all in the service of forward motion. “Plankton” occupies a similar space albeit in bite-sized form, centering Buterss’s low end melodicism and high-string visitations surrounded by skittering tonal chatter from their bandmates.
Of course, SML’s experiments with this kind of pulsating freedom are heavily balanced by muscular turns and body mechanics fit for the dancefloor. “Taking Out the Trash” 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.
“Is there a way to dim the lights a little more?” Chiu asks at the start of the album’s closer “Mouth Words.” Moments later SML takes us out with a mid-tempo 4/4 groover dressed in swelling glissandos and punctuated by insistent, rapid-fire phrases from Johnson’s alto. As the final tune dissolves into a layer of arpeggiated chirps and sampled crowd sounds, Chiu’s voice is back again to say what we’re all thinking: “Very good. Thank you.”
SML is:
Anna Butterss - Electric Bass
Jeremiah Chiu - Modular Synthesizer, Live-sampling, Percussion,Synthesizers
Josh Johnson - Saxophone, Electronics,Synthesizers
Booker Stardrum - Drums, Percussion
Gregory Uhlmann - Guitar, Effects, Sampler, Electronics
Engineered and Recorded Live:
Zebulon, Los Angeles (July 8 & 9, 2024) by Bryce Gonzales
The High Low, Los Angeles (November 11, 2024) by Bryce Gonzales
Public Records, New York City (December 3, 2024) by Dave Vettraino
Empty Bottle, Chicago (March 3, 2025) by Dave Vettraino
Tractor Tavern, Seattle (March 20, 2025) by Dr. Jon
Composed, compiled, edited, and overdubbed by SML (2025)
Produced by SML
Mixed by Josh Johnson, SML, Bryce Gonzales, and Dave Vettraino
Sequence by SML and Scott McNiece
Mastered by David Allen
Cover art by Sonnenzimmer
Photo by David Haskell
Design by Jeremiah Chiu
앨범은 그 속에 담겨 있는 정보 자체만으로 가치가 있기 때문에 단순 변심으로 인한 교환과 환불은 음악가의 저작권 보호를 위해 제한합니다.
사이즈는 측정 방법에 따라 오차가 있을 수 있습니다.
소비자의 부주의로 인한 변형에 대해서는 보상 및 책임이 어렵습니다.
배송 안내
오후 1시 주문완료 시 당일 발송됩니다.
교환/환불 안내 (REFUND / EXCHANGE)
제품에 착용 흔적이 없는 상태에서 교환 및 환불이 가능합니다. 상품 또는 상품 포장지가 훼손 되었거나 택이 없을 경우 교환 / 환불이 불가합니다. 세탁한 상품은 교환/환불이 불가합니다. 단순변심 및 사이즈 오류로 인한 반송 사례는 고객님께서 운송비를 부담하여 주셔야 합니다. 모니터 해상도에 따른 색상, 질감 및 사이즈 오차는 단순 변심으로 접수됩니다. 제품 공정 과정 중 발생하는 마감 실밥, 열펜 자국 등은 불량으로 간주되지 않습니다. 5일 이내(주말, 공휴일 제외) 회수되지 않을 경우 기간 경과로 교환/반품이 철회될 수 있습니다. 반품 수령 후 검수 기간으로 인해 교환 / 환불 처리까지 영업일 기준 약 1-3일 정도 소요될 수 있습니다. 타 택배사 이용하여 직접 발송하실 경우 선불로 발송해 주셔야 하며, 반품 택배비에 한하여 부과되지 않습니다. 교환 배송비는 동봉 시 분실 위험이 있어, 계좌이체로만 진행됩니다. 교환 배송비 - 8,000원 교환 재배송은 회수 상품 도착일 기준으로 4영업일 이내 출고됩니다. *교환/반품이 불가능한 경우 교환 / 환불 방법에 대한 자세한 내용은 고객센터 FAQ에서 확인하실 수 있습니다. *고객센터 : +82 10-3878-1082 / 월,수,금 PM 13:00 - PM 17:00 환불안내 물류센터 도착일 기준 반입 여부 확인과 검수를 거쳐 4영업일 이내 결제 금액을 환불해 드립니다. |
© 2026. SML. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. © 2026. HELICOPTER RECORDS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
© 2025. CORD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
SML - HOW YOU BEEN (VINYL)
SML은 베이시스트 Anna Butterss, 신디사이저 연주자 Jeremiah Chiu, 색소포니스트 Josh Johnson, 퍼커셔니스트 Booker Stardrum, 기타리스트 Gregory Uhlmann으로 이루어진 퀸텟이다. 두 번째 앨범 《How You Been》에서 이들은 데뷔작 《Small Medium Large》에서 탐구했던 집단적이고 초현실적인 음악 제작 방식을 한층 더 밀어붙인다.
이번 앨범은 라이브 공연 녹음을 기반으로 extensive한 후반 작업을 거쳐 완성되었다. 데뷔작이 LA Highland Park의 작은 공연장 ETA에서 열린 초기 공연들을 바탕으로 만들어졌다면, 《How You Been》은 훨씬 더 넓어진 공연 경험과 축적된 감각 속에서 탄생했다. 밴드는 2024년 말과 2025년 초의 공연들을 하나의 생성적 실험처럼 다루며, 모든 연주를 녹음했다. 그러나 공연마다 사전에 정해진 방향은 없었고, 모든 음악은 직관적인 즉흥 연주에서 시작되었다.
SML은 공연과 스튜디오 작업 양쪽 모두에서 더욱 정교한 언어를 발전시켰다. 초기에는 Essential Logic, Oval, Herbie Hancock의 《Sextant》, 전기 시기의 Miles Davis 같은 비교가 따라붙었고, Afrobeat·코스미셰·프로토 테크노·뉴재즈 등의 영향도 언급되었다. 하지만 《How You Been》에서는 그러한 참조들을 해체하면서도 확장해, 완전히 새로운 SML만의 사운드를 만들어낸다.
이들의 음악은 현재 LA 실험·즉흥 음악 신(Scene)의 흐름 속에서 탄생했다. 이는 과거 크라우트록 시기의 쾰른과 뒤셀도르프, 노 웨이브 시대의 뉴욕, 혹은 90년대 시카고와 비견될 만한 창조적 환경으로 묘사된다. SML 멤버들은 다양한 프로젝트와 협업을 통해 서로 연결되어 있으며, 그 집단적 네트워크 자체가 음악의 중요한 기반이 되고 있다.
앨범 수록곡들은 즉흥성과 세밀한 편집 감각이 공존한다. 「Chicago Four」는 시카고 공연장 The Empty Bottle에서의 라이브 녹음을 바탕으로, 반복되는 신시사이저와 퍼커션 루프 위에 기타와 색소폰이 겹쳐지며 최면적인 흐름을 만든다. 「Brood Board SHROOM」은 앰비언트와 자유로운 리듬이 뒤섞인 몽환적 공간을 만들고, 「Taking Out the Trash」는 브레이크비트와 펑크적 기타 리프가 결합된 강렬한 댄스 트랙으로 전개된다. 마지막 곡 「Mouth Words」는 느린 4/4 그루브 속에서 앨범 전체를 차분하게 마무리한다.
SML is the quintet of bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann. Their second album, How You Been, finds the supergroup of prolific composer/producers pushing ever further into the hyperrealist, collectivist approach to music creation nascently explored on their 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. This new work 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, How You Been 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. Within every performance is an impressive display of the band’s total trust in one another and confidence in their own instincts.
As 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 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.
“SML might signal a new iteration of jazz, or it might not be jazz at all, or it might not matter.” - Pitchfork
It’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 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 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 and Expansion Trio, the Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes trio, Anna Butterss’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.
On How You Been the curatorial challenge of the capture-cut production employed by SML is met by the delightful happenstance of each member being a seasoned producer on their own merit. Accordingly, SML’s perspective on what is a moment to expand upon with the post-producer’s knife and glue is five-strong. Each member’s proclivities, penchants, and predelections get their chance to filter the always-evolving elements of the group concept.
“Chicago Four” uses a live recording from treasured Chicago haunt The Empty Bottle as its foundation. It begins with interlocking synth and percussion loops before the entry of Uhlmann’s wobble-effected electric guitar melody and Butterss’s picked bass counterpoint. Stardrum’s swinging traps 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.
“Brood Board SHROOM” is a temporary touchdown on an alien planet where rhythm moves in timeless, breath-like undulations, with repetitions cut from a very different cloth than the lock-step polyrhythmic grooves of “Chicago Four.” The track’s opening lines evoke the soft throbs of the beloved ambient works of Aphex Twin (or perhaps a Robitussen-drenched take on Steve Reich’s Different Trains), before frothy curtains of textured sound drape into the mix, overlaying like distant, minimalist symphonies in a gentle, synthetic recreation of free time — slackening and accelerating as each layer of tonal pulses hovers to front-and-center or retreats into the distance. It’s a gut feeling rather than an academic exercise, and it’s all in the service of forward motion. “Plankton” occupies a similar space albeit in bite-sized form, centering Buterss’s low end melodicism and high-string visitations surrounded by skittering tonal chatter from their bandmates.
Of course, SML’s experiments with this kind of pulsating freedom are heavily balanced by muscular turns and body mechanics fit for the dancefloor. “Taking Out the Trash” 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.
“Is there a way to dim the lights a little more?” Chiu asks at the start of the album’s closer “Mouth Words.” Moments later SML takes us out with a mid-tempo 4/4 groover dressed in swelling glissandos and punctuated by insistent, rapid-fire phrases from Johnson’s alto. As the final tune dissolves into a layer of arpeggiated chirps and sampled crowd sounds, Chiu’s voice is back again to say what we’re all thinking: “Very good. Thank you.”
SML is:
Anna Butterss - Electric Bass
Jeremiah Chiu - Modular Synthesizer, Live-sampling, Percussion,Synthesizers
Josh Johnson - Saxophone, Electronics,Synthesizers
Booker Stardrum - Drums, Percussion
Gregory Uhlmann - Guitar, Effects, Sampler, Electronics
Engineered and Recorded Live:
Zebulon, Los Angeles (July 8 & 9, 2024) by Bryce Gonzales
The High Low, Los Angeles (November 11, 2024) by Bryce Gonzales
Public Records, New York City (December 3, 2024) by Dave Vettraino
Empty Bottle, Chicago (March 3, 2025) by Dave Vettraino
Tractor Tavern, Seattle (March 20, 2025) by Dr. Jon
Composed, compiled, edited, and overdubbed by SML (2025)
Produced by SML
Mixed by Josh Johnson, SML, Bryce Gonzales, and Dave Vettraino
Sequence by SML and Scott McNiece
Mastered by David Allen
Cover art by Sonnenzimmer
Photo by David Haskell
Design by Jeremiah Chiu
앨범은 그 속에 담겨 있는 정보 자체만으로 가치가 있기 때문에 단순 변심으로 인한 교환과 환불은 음악가의 저작권 보호를 위해 제한합니다.
사이즈는 측정 방법에 따라 오차가 있을 수 있습니다.
소비자의 부주의로 인한 변형에 대해서는 보상 및 책임이 어렵습니다.
배송 안내
오후 1시 주문완료 시 당일 발송됩니다.
교환/환불 안내 (REFUND / EXCHANGE)
제품에 착용 흔적이 없는 상태에서 교환 및 환불이 가능합니다. 상품 또는 상품 포장지가 훼손 되었거나 택이 없을 경우 교환 / 환불이 불가합니다. 세탁한 상품은 교환/환불이 불가합니다. 단순변심 및 사이즈 오류로 인한 반송 사례는 고객님께서 운송비를 부담하여 주셔야 합니다. 모니터 해상도에 따른 색상, 질감 및 사이즈 오차는 단순 변심으로 접수됩니다. 제품 공정 과정 중 발생하는 마감 실밥, 열펜 자국 등은 불량으로 간주되지 않습니다. 5일 이내(주말, 공휴일 제외) 회수되지 않을 경우 기간 경과로 교환/반품이 철회될 수 있습니다. 반품 수령 후 검수 기간으로 인해 교환 / 환불 처리까지 영업일 기준 약 1-3일 정도 소요될 수 있습니다. 타 택배사 이용하여 직접 발송하실 경우 선불로 발송해 주셔야 하며, 반품 택배비에 한하여 부과되지 않습니다. 교환 배송비는 동봉 시 분실 위험이 있어, 계좌이체로만 진행됩니다. 교환 배송비 - 8,000원 교환 재배송은 회수 상품 도착일 기준으로 4영업일 이내 출고됩니다. *교환/반품이 불가능한 경우 교환 / 환불 방법에 대한 자세한 내용은 고객센터 FAQ에서 확인하실 수 있습니다. *고객센터 : +82 10-3878-1082 / 월,수,금 PM 13:00 - PM 17:00 환불안내 물류센터 도착일 기준 반입 여부 확인과 검수를 거쳐 4영업일 이내 결제 금액을 환불해 드립니다. |
