When SML dropped its 2024 debut, the group’s admixture of loopy groove, staticky texture and shifting timbre came on like a transmission from the outer reaches. Behind the music was a method: rangy collective improv whittled down to size, based on a trove of live tape. SML has released two more albums since, the latest of which, Spontaneous Music Live, consists of two unedited long performances rooted in real-time interplay. For this episode, three of SML’s five members — bassist Anna Butterss, saxophonist Josh Johnson, and synthesist Jeremiah Chiu — joined Julian Booker, WRTI’s Associate Program Director for Jazz, to talk about their commitment to shared discovery. (The others are guitarist Gregory Uhlmann and percussionist Booker Stardrum.) Listen in to learn more about one of our moment’s most beguiling bands.
Interview Highlights
Josh Johnson, on why Spontaneous Music Live is the one record they didn't touch
How You Been differed from the first record in that we'd played a lot more and collected many more recordings — we were recording almost every show and every set, so we had that much more material to start from. We also had access to multitracks for the first time, which let us edit and shape and recompose in a way the first record's limitations didn't allow. Spontaneous Music Live is the opposite of that: what you're hearing is two basically unedited pieces, just as they happened live in the room. There's always been a distance between our live shows and our records, even though they're connected, and we thought it might be interesting to share what it actually feels and sounds like in the room — where the source material for everything else comes from.
Jeremiah Chiu, on digging through the archive for How You Been
What's interesting about this group is that you essentially have five individuals who all have their own solo projects and their own sound they're developing — and we've built enough trust that we're genuinely open to each other's ideas. With How You Been there was just this sheer amount of material to work through, and we started treating anything in the archive as a jumping-off point for a composition. Some tracks are heavily edited; others have almost no edits at all — and it's funny, because some of the ones people assumed were heavily produced afterward were completely unedited. There's a lot more possible in a live show than you might expect from a traditional arrangement, once you really dig in.
Anna Butterss, on why the band doesn't rehearse
We don't rehearse, and we try to avoid talking about anything specific we might do before a show. We might say something general — "I've been listening to this record" — but we stay away from anything that could turn into a preconceived plan. So much of what we do live is based on deep connection and trust with each other. If we're feeling close and connected socially, it's much easier to get on stage and trust that we can try something we haven't tried before — and for me, that's the way into pushing the music forward instead of getting stuck in a rut.
Josh Johnson, on trying to sabotage their own comfort zones
We definitely find ways of relating to each other that are comfortable, and that shows up in the music — that's part of what's beautiful about the band, the specific spaces the chemistry between us leads to. But we're also all keeping an eye on that and trying to counter it. It might be a tempo, or the order of events — Jeremiah might kick something off and then midway through the set point to Greg and say, essentially, "you start something now." We're all individually tracking that and thinking about how to evade the expectation to keep it fresh. It's easy to get comfortable with what works, but we're committed to it not working sometimes too, because that's how we get to new things. As an audience member, you're part of that journey of us finding our way toward something — we're all looking for ways to sabotage the plan.
Anna Butterss, on bringing guest musicians on stage with zero instruction
At [the festival] Big Ears we had two guests each night on the second set, different guests every night, and we didn't tell them anything about the music — no instructions at all. We just got on stage and let them be in our band. Those sets went in really different directions, because those people all have their own voices and their own way of throwing a wrench into what we were doing. It's an interesting balance — always trying to sabotage things and push toward something new, while still retaining a band sound people can recognize as SML.
Josh Johnson, on playing like producers
I think of producing and playing in SML as different access points to the same thing. What I enjoy about producing is helping someone realize what they're imagining — and in the best case, that's not so different from how SML functions: we have some idea of what something might be, but there's trust that there's room for what hasn't been planned, and responding to that in the moment is often what reveals the most beautiful things. I think we all kind of improvise like producers, in the sense that there's a simultaneous tracking of the micro and the macro — here's what I'm doing within my own part, but I'm also aware of what the group is doing, what the narrative is, whether it's time to change or time to commit to building tension.
Jeremiah Chiu, on synthesizing rhythm without a drum machine
I intentionally avoided drum machine sounds for a long time, because using a traditional kick-snare-hi-hat felt too easy — like I'd already heard that approach. I wanted to see if I could synthesize rhythm without those exact pieces, which forces me to use my instrument differently than what comes straight out of the box. It pushes me to try to capture something that feels as good as a drum machine, but coming from the completely opposite direction.
