Spontaneous Music Live

Genre tags have a way of lingering around bands, just ask the early UK bands that got saddled with the “shoegaze” tag. Credit former WFMU DJ Scott McDowell with the hashtag “gorp jazz” – whose characteristics include space, texture, atmosphere, and “depth over drama” – which was promptly affixed to LA unit SML, the five-piece becoming poster children for this new sound, equally indebted to Terry Riley and minimalism as it was to ECM and post-rock. Their previous two albums, 2024’s SML and last year’s How You Been followed a strategy similar to that of their labelmate Makaya McCraven or sometime employer Jeff Parker on his recent solo albums: splice live takes and loop and tweak to create something new. 

Famously, SML worked as a live entity, taking those tapes and working them into albums, while Spontaneous Music Live suggests the band never needs to hide behind studio trickery to mesmerize. Across two unedited sidelong jams, SML provides hard evidence that the band is just as magical working with whole cloth. Tightly interwoven polyrhythms get teased into new beguiling directions by bassist Anna Butterss and drummer Booker Stardrum. Gurgles from Jeremiah Chiu’s modular synth set-up open up into wide, shimmering rivers. Melodic patterns established by guitarist Gregory Uhlmann and saxophonist Josh Johnson get carefully constructed, before allowing their feverish flights to shred them. Like the hiking metaphor behind that genre name, SML reaches one thrilling plateau, catches their breath, and then begins the thrilling work of climbing to a higher vista.