SML - How You Been (Plankton Green Vinyl) Vinyl LP

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 deeper into the hyperrealist, collectivist approach to music-making they first explored on their debut, Small Medium Large—a record praised as “awe-inspiring” by Glide, “exuberant” by the Los Angeles Times, and “an exciting milestone” by Pitchfork.

From the outset, SML drew eclectic comparisons to Essential Logic, Oval, Herbie Hancock’s Sextant, and electric-era Miles Davis, as well as to genre touchpoints including Afrobeat, kosmische music, proto-techno, and new jazz. On How You Been, the group both collapses and transcends these references, presenting a high-resolution evolution of their sound—one poised to inspire imitators of its own.

SML’s music, however, didn’t emerge in isolation. The band is part of a broad, interwoven community of Los Angeles musicians who collaborate across countless configurations. The city’s 2020s scene mirrors past creative hotbeds—Cologne and Düsseldorf during the rise of Krautrock, Canterbury in the late ’60s, New York’s No Wave and Downtown scenes, and Chicago’s boundary-less ’90s innovations. The musicians of SML sit at the center of this new Los Angeles continuum, appearing in groups like Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet, the Uhlmann-Johnson-Wilkes trio, Anna Butterss’s band, and numerous other projects that link every member of the quintet in continually shifting combinations.