Mike Rutherford once described being in a band as the ultimate state of compromise. “What you lose in compromise, you gain in collaboration,” he said. The greatest achievement of the Los Angeles quintet SML is making you forget that compromise exists. It isn’t necessary because Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Josh Johnson, Booker Stardrum, and Gregory Uhlmann function as a single unit. In this respect, they may very well be the best band playing in America at this moment. Their previous albums—the kaleidoscopic debut Small Medium Large and 2025’s more carefully curated but no less adventurous How You Been—make the case. Spontaneous Music Live strengthens it further.
Unlike the group’s previous two albums, which were pieced together from numerous live performances, either at one location (the now-shuttered ETA, in the case of the first album) or multiple (in the case of the second), then painstakingly mixed and edited, Spontaneous Music Live features two side-long tracks recorded entirely live at their spiritual home, Zebulon Café in Los Angeles, direct to Nagra by Bryce Gonzales. As a result, what stands out to a listener is not particular songs but specific instants, mere seconds that are lifted out of time and space, capable of doing strange, beautiful things to your eardrums.
I once asked Jeremiah Chiu to summarize, in layman’s terms, how SML makes music. “The thing we do the most of,” he answered, “is listen.” More than their previous two albums, Spontaneous Music Live is an expression of this active listening, because of its live nature. “Listening” in this context translates directly to “waiting”; as a group, SML wait for each other, searching for a groove or a sound that might work. As their listeners, we wait for them to find it. This would feel directionless if it weren’t so painstakingly precise. Where much jazz improvisation unfolds within an agreed structure, SML works with almost none, choosing something more intuitive and dangerous. It requires great discipline, of course, but also a willingness to follow particular sounds or ideas as they occur in the moment. The reward is passages of such sonic cohesion that they feel like listening to a lightning bolt.
“The Drums,” the record’s opening track, is a great example of this. As the name suggests, it begins with Booker Stardrum’s percussion, which, in the Zebulon performance space, is unbelievably crisp. The clean, high click of his snare rings out beautifully over the lower purring of Josh Johnson’s saxophone, taking center stage as the piece starts to build. Only three and a half minutes in do we start to know where the track is building to. The joy, of course, is that SML discovers where it’s going at exactly the same time as we do. Stardrum hits his crash cymbal as though to signal a changing of gear, and suddenly the piece gathers velocity. A few minutes later, as Jeremiah Chiu’s synthesizer and Johnson’s saxophone trade blows, looping around the same two notes with increasing speed, it seems that the group might have reached their peak. Not so—we’re only six minutes in, and so it’s time not to end the piece but transition into a new part of it.
SML is at its best in these transitional moments; the players repeat the same sounds each time in a form of sonic hypnosis, performed on each other and on their audience, mining deep into each note to see what they can dig out. If, in their previous works, this might have felt like an experiment performed in the editing suite, Spontaneous Live Music proves that it is, in fact, one done in the moment. That it creates pieces of such cohesion is a feat in itself. On “The Drums,” it is clear that this achievement is largely due to the rhythm section. Stardrum’s percussion and Anna Butterss’ bass are in exceptional synergy, and the way they keep time is indecipherable and strange—an act not of mere time signatures or bars but something gnarlier and more unhinged; like two riders on a tandem bike who suddenly let go of the handlebars and start popping BMX tricks.
If some of “The Drums” sounds familiar to those who know SML’s work—Johnson’s saxophone motifs, Greg Uhlmann’s thin, spidery guitar lines—these echoes of familiarity are mere touchstones in a landscape that the group is both painting for the first time and freewheeling across. It is hard to think of another group who could manage being just as audibly influenced by Kraftwerk as it is Miles Davis, Can, Herbie Hancock, and Bach, but all of these are audible on Spontaneous Music Live, whether through their rigorous and thorough fascination with repetition (Bach), the sleek, mesmeric quality of their synths (Kraftwerk), or SML’s willingness to throw everything and the kitchen sink at a few bars of music (Miles Davis, c.a. On the Corner). On “Roundabouts,” there is a feeling of continuous motion and building momentum that is similar to what you can hear on “The Drums.” Propelled onward by Butterss’ electric bass, which is smart, blistering, warm, and funky all at once, SML’s frontline dance nimbly around each other, wandering into new nooks and crannies before wandering right back out again. The result is twenty-five minutes of unstoppable music looming into the space with the intensity of a brick wall.
So many sounds are happening in “Roundabouts” at the same time. Listen hard enough and you’ll uncover something you didn’t catch before. Yes, there are recognizable parts: Johnson’s saxophone pipes and jabbers with a marvelous atonality, adopting melody only at certain delicious, transcendent moments; Uhlmann and Chiu work to put together a shaggy, spiky texture of call-and-response, enunciating each round with an exactness that belies its improvised nature. Underneath, SML’s backline is having its own party of wickedly sharp, pacy ebbs and flows. An occasional dance up the fretboard to the higher notes of Butterss’ bass penetrates through curtains of sound. Stardrum follows behind, keeping a remarkable pace. Everything is rendered masterfully through Bryce Gonzales’ exceptional mixing. In him, SML has found its creative equal—someone who can keep pace, running alongside, as they career across a mix of sounds.
Of course, sound engineers are the great unsung heroes of the music industry, but to my ear, what Gonzales exhibits on Spontaneous Music Live is a preternatural ability. He anticipates what the band will do before it does it. In his recording, even the cooler elements of “Roundabouts”—the shuddering squeal of strings near the song’s conclusion, or the whiny synth sounds that form its first motif—have an unshakeable warmth to them. Butterss’ bass gains a punchy, three-dimensional quality, and the midrange of the synths and saxophone sounds has a human quality, almost as though the instruments were actually talking. Such sound quality does not limit the “live” feeling of these recordings. Indeed, where SML’s previous work was as much a feat of editing as live musicianship, Spontaneous Music Live thrives in the imperfections that are necessary to live performance, when some chatter emanates from around the band, or someone lingers too long in a particular groove before being tugged along by the momentum of their bandmates. All of this is captured in unfaltering quality by Gonzales and his Nagra recorder, making you feel as though you were there in the moment, but also already listening back to it.
The album’s finest moments are its blank spaces—the points at which the players step onto a canvas that doesn’t yet exist. Here they hesitate, feeling out the next brushstroke before committing to it. They listen to themselves, to each other. Then the picture suddenly comes into focus. Such bravery and unity of purpose are inimitable; they make Spontaneous Music Live a real joy, not just for the sounds it creates, but for the sounds it could have created, the knowledge that the next spark of perfect music is just around the corner. [International Anthem]
Mariam Abdel-Razek is a writer and critic based in London. Her writing has previously appeared in The Line of Best Fit, The Tonearm, and Varsity.
