SML

A kind of kindred spirit to Jeff Parker’s Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy, SML’s debut was also recored at the vaunted, but now shuttered L.A. venue. The band held down a few stretches at the Academy before it shuttered, and from those performances, the bones of what would become Small Medium Large were built. Recorded live and then taken home to edit, rearrange, chop and chip at what they’d worked out, the resulting album shares an origin (and two members) with Parker, but the core of its sound is much further afield. More rooted towards the German Progressives than the fusion set, the works from SML are rhythmically locked and looped — hypnotic, but tantalizingly experimental at their core.

Booker Stardrum and Anna Butterss keep the band anchored to a propulsive core. Jeremiah Chiu twists the v-hold and lets things get lopsided with singed synths. Gregory Uhlmann’s guitars thread through the labyrinth with slippery skill, chewing on No Wave as often as jazz modes, while Josh Johnson’s sax proves a cutting companion to the fray. The band bends and brands the listener, shuttling them through the start-stop traffic of “Switchboard Operations,” before oozing into the languorous “Soft Sand,” and the oxygenated funk of “Three Over Steel” The record is a blur of lights and motion, of sensory input from all sides tethered to a bedrock of beat that’s unflagging in the most delightful way. The progressive jazz field is crowded this year, but SML have risen to the top of the essentials list for 2024.

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