Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD),
On its face, there’s not much “large” about Small Medium Large, the debut recording by free improv collective SML. The leaderless band comprises five members; the album is 43 minutes long, its longest track just over six. The fact is that there is a “large” element to this music—it’s just been hidden from our view.
Each of Small Medium Large’s 11 pieces is a carefully curated snapshot of a longer-form improvisation, sculpted into shape by the musicians—bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, guitarist Gregory Uhlmann, and drummer Booker Stardrum—and recording engineer Bryce Gonzales. (Think Miles and Teo on Bitches Brew, or, more contemporarily, Makaya McCraven). The twist on the formula, though, is the use of glitchy, multilayered and often caustic electro-grooves to contour these improvs. The end product has no easy comparisons: Autechre in collaboration with the Claudia Quintet, perhaps? Or John Zorn, produced by Adrian Sherwood? Whatever it is, it’s something that, in real life, has never happened before.
Much of this is clearly the brainchild of Chiu, who does live sampling and digital percussion as well as synths, but there’s too much else happening to give him all the credit. “History of Communication,” for example, was built from a recording of the band improvising that they shaped into the final product together. “Industry”—which, true to its name, does sound like industrial dance music—features kinetic, apparently live layers by Johnson and Uhlmann, as well as enough variations in Butterss’s bass to suggest they might be playing live too. And if those lines by Butterss and Johnson in “Feed the Birds” are samples, Chiu is remarkably cunning in placing them to sound as if they’re responding in the moment to the ambient grooves behind them.
Uhlmann has a major voice in this music, too, albeit one easy to overlook because he spends so much time playing vamps. His work on the gentle “Greg’s Melody,” however, shows just how deeply his guitar—effects-laden or open—has penetrated all of these tracks. Once it’s soaked in, Uhlmann suddenly appears everywhere across the album: softly buffering the sax melody on the opening “Rubber Tree Dance,” countering Stardrum’s hypnotic ticking on “Search Bar Hi Hat,” providing dubby, shadowy mystery on “Soft Sand.”
So the largeness is present, in a sense, on Small Medium Large, while SML has at the same time put that largeness out of our reach. The title need not be taken so literally, though. As a metaphor, it title seems to be suggesting that the music herein covers expansive ground—a claim far harder to nitpick.
