RECORD LABEL; International Anthem
RELEASE DATE; 7 November, 2025
RATING; 4/5
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
SML’s sophomore album How You Been is a riot of improvised energy and studio collage: taut grooves, elastic sax lines and a hunger for digital mischief. Los Angeles quintet SML expands the live-improvisation approach of their debut into denser post-production — ambience, tape-hiss and modular synths are stitched into raw takes, producing an album that feels immediate and elaborately reworked. The band released How You Been on International Anthem in November 2025.
Opening fragments like “Gutteral Utterance” set a cinematic, unsettling tone before the record settles into motoric grooves. Tracks such as “Taking Out the Trash” and “Daves” show SML’s knack for marrying funk propulsion with free-jazz elasticity: saxophonist Josh Johnson moves from spare, rhythmic punctures to ecstatic bursts while Anna Butterss’s bass and Booker Stardrum’s drums lock into irresistible pulses. Guitarist Gregory Uhlmann and synth architect Jeremiah Chiu lace the arrangements with chiming motifs and fractured textures that push the music toward dancefloors as often as listening rooms.
Where How You Been excels is its breadth of textures: krautrock motorik, warped Eno-ish ambience, and flashes of rave-ready euphoria. The title track pairs an oddly anthemic guitar line with kinetic rhythms; the two-part “Stepping In / The Loop” builds tension through repetition and release. Critics have highlighted the record’s balance of spontaneity and studio manipulation — the result is an album that rewards repeat hearings as new details surface from the mix.
Across thirteen tracks and roughly forty-three minutes, SML demonstrate a rare mix of looseness and compositional intent. Details — buried vocal snippets, tape flutters and micro-rhythms — keep revealing themselves on repeat listens. How You Been feels playful and rigorous, danceable and cerebral: an invigorating example of contemporary improvised music that refuses tidy genre labels. Listeners familiar with Small Medium Large will find continuity, but also clear growth: SML have made a record that bristles with curiosity and readable ambition. Highly recommended.
