Late last fall, word suddenly got out about SML, Los Angeles’ latest torchbearers of slanted jazz. Following a snazzy New York Times profile and a second album that teased their squiggly sound out to delightful new levels, the quintet had two dates set at Frogtown scenester mainstay Zebulon, with each night comprising two sets in the round. Last time they played at Zeb, it was a similar two-night affair to celebrate the release of their 2024 debut LP—though both of those shows were free. This time, both nights were selling so fast that they had to add a third.
The excitement had taken a minute to reach boiling point. Building off their formative performances at now-defunct Highland Park oyster bar/jam station ETA, the five-piece SML emerged as one of the most freewheeling units to spin off from what Jeff Parker kicked off in the city years before. Bassist Anna Butterss and saxophonist Josh Johnson both remain part of his acclaimed ETA IVtet, among the band’s many other illustrious credits. But where Parker’s sound balances restrained, misty wanderings with a lurching sense of rhythm, SML are openly discombobulating listeners with each performance. The inclusion of Jeremiah Chiu on modular synthesizer launches the possibilities of an SML set from mere jazz into total cosmic disarray. Attendees might be treated to something akin to a Fela Kuti set as held by Berlin’s Zodiak Free Arts Lab, or Pharoah Sanders if he got chewed up by one of Raymond Scott’s contraptions, or Medeski, Martin and Wood as a noise-rock band. It’s dialed in, but off the rails.
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.
If there’s a grounding principle to SML’s sound, it’s a buzz that comes baked into the music itself. As their performances tend to do, both of these tracks coalesce around a canter at about 130 BPM—fast enough to keep heads bobbing without going full Agharta. “The Drums” puts percussionist Booker Stardrum in the driver’s seat: Evolving from a steady rumble of toms and side sticks into a full-steam swing, his playing is muscular yet hypnotic, providing a shifting frame for the rest of the players to decorate. Johnson and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann blast out scattershot flecks of melody, honking out playfully dissonant call-and-responses as if they were two Echo Park geese getting into a fight. Butterss subtly steers the ship, spelling out melodies on their bass that ground all the disparate elements into something resembling a song.
Though each member of SML comfortably steps into these types of classically supportive roles as needed, they can shapeshift at a moment’s notice (even with Chiu commanding the most imposing modular rig, practically everyone in the group also plays a synth or a sampler of some sort). Johnson, for instance, seems to mimic Chiu’s looping synth logic throughout the cresting middle stretch of “The Drums,” mutating his sax playing into tight little phrases, then repeating and refining them again and again. By around 14 minutes in, you can hear the wheels start coming off, until he spins out of control like a laundry machine gone haywire.
With so many elements in play—especially once you start factoring in Johnson and Uhlmann looping themselves, or Chiu live-sampling the other members to veer off into new sounds—it’s impressive the whole thing doesn’t come off like pure cacophony. But what SML land on here goes down remarkably smooth, and the band has a way of hopscotching into moments that feel ecstatically cohesive. “Roundabouts” commences with Chiu dropping a tricky 5/4 bass pattern that the rest of the band seamlessly starts laying polyrhythms around. As Chiu sets up a flickering firefly dance of a synth hook, the band climbs and climbs, Uhlmann adding in nervy hammer-ons until 11 minutes in, when Butterss suddenly sets up a new chord change. Uhlmann and Johnson immediately take the hint, blowing the lid off with intersecting layers of transcendent high notes, harmonizing together as if it was the chorus they were always clearly headed toward.
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.
