*Announcing* SML - Small Medium Large /// debut album out June 28th, 2024
*announcing* IARC0085
SML
Small Medium Large
LP / CD / DD out June 28th, 2024
Introducing: SML – a new quintet stacked with luminaries from Los Angeles’s jazz, improvised, indie and modern music scenes: bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann.
Small Medium Large is their debut album.
((( Photo by Joyce Kim )))
Small Medium Large began as a collection of long form improvisations recorded by the group during two separate two-night stands at beloved Highland Park, Los Angeles venue ETA. Unfortunately, this major development site for the burgeoning new West Coast jazz & improvised music sound closed its doors permanently at the end of 2023. The venue, perhaps best known outside of LA for Jeff Parker's 2022 album Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, was the perfect location for the start of SML, especially given that both bassist Anna Butterss and saxophonist Josh Johnson are part of Parker's quartet that held down a regular gig at ETA since the venue's early days (and hence thoroughly documented, heard on Parker's album).
Small Medium Large was engineered and recorded in stereo direct to Nagra by Bryce Gonzales and compiled, arranged, and edited with additional production, recording, and studio composition by SML across their various home studios. While editing, chopping, and rearranging stereo mixed improvisations is hardly a new idea (for a modern and relevant example we can look to Makaya McCraven's output on IARC) these results are a stunning expansion of the Teo Macero / Miles Davis editing concept explored on classics like In a Silent Way, On The Corner, and Get Up With It. Stylistically though, these recordings have more in common with the proto-trance repetitions of Harmonia, and with Holgar Czukay's re-assembly technique used in his work with Can. Throw in a supremely intuitive utilization of polyrhythmic floating patterns (a la Susumu Yokota), and the result is a truly innovative take on time-clocked electronic rhythms augmented with live instrumentation that never loses that elusive human sway.
It's a sublime assemblage of circulatory grooves and textural anomalies bewitched by swirls of modular synthesis, at different moments recalling the the jagged dance-punk of Essential Logic, the rhythmic revelry of Fela Kuti, the low-end elasticity of Parliament/Funkadelic, or the glitchy dub techno of Pole. Taken in totality, the album captures a euphoric creative synchronicity between some of today's most exciting musicians.
((( Photo by Brian Guido )))
"Industry"
Along with our announcement, the album's lead single is available on all digital music platforms today. "Industry" is a chugging proto-trance banger that builds from a gurgling synthesizer loop into a menacing breakbeat groove. Playing against a funky industrial drum machine churn that’s one part Public Image Ltd., one part Battles, and several parts Herbie Hancock‘s Sextant, distorted saxophone leads and shards of guitar lend a vicious and judicious sheen of cosmic chaos.
*Deluxe Vinyl Package*
Sedimentary Orange color vinyl
Small Medium Large comes on 140-gram vinyl (pressed by Pallas in Germany, with lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST) inside a heavyweight reverse board jacket, with our IARC obi strip and poly-lined dome patterned innersleeve.
We also have a limited edition color vinyl option, for the first pressing only, with 444 copies of *Sedimentary Orange* color vinyl available via our Bandcamp page.
Purchase Small Medium Large as part of the
**Summer Mini Mondo Bundle**
For the fervent, faithful collector of our output.
Due to the popularity of our last two MONDO bundles, we’ve decided to keep the seasonal bundle series rolling! This new 𝙎𝙐𝙈𝙈𝙀𝙍 𝙈𝙄𝙉𝙄 𝙈𝙊𝙉𝘿𝙊 contains all three of our albums to-be-announced across Summer 2024... with a couple BIG extras this time: (𝟭) 𝗡𝗢𝗪 𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗛 *𝗙𝗥𝗘𝗘 𝗦𝗛𝗜𝗣𝗣𝗜𝗡𝗚, 𝗪𝗢𝗥𝗟𝗗𝗪𝗜𝗗𝗘, and (𝟮) 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗘𝗨 𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲, in addition to the US & UK warehouses, which will help to minimize VAT tax etc !!!
All items with ship together in one package around August 1st, 2024, just in time for the worldwide street date of album #2. Note, this means that you will indeed receive album #1 ~four weeks after the street date, BUT it also means that you will receive album #3 ~four weeks BEFORE its street date. Bandcamp downloads will be sent via email for all the releases by or before the ship date.
Order the Summer Mini Mondo on limited edition color vinyl here.
Order the Summer Mini Mondo on classic black vinyl here.
(No CD bundle this time, sorry...)
*re: FREE SHIPPING, due to a technical nuance that’s not worth describing here, we had to charge atleast .50 cents, so please don’t be alarmed : )
Distribution via RedEye for US, Canada, North & South America
This album will also be available on CD, Cassette, and Classic Black Vinyl (same package specs as listed above).
Retailers in the United States or Canada or anywhere else inside of North, South and Central America... Please reach out to your sales rep at RedEye Worldwide if you are interested in making wholesale purchases of this album, or any other album in our catalog. Don't yet have a RedEye rep? Please just reach out to us and we'll get you hooked up!
Distribution via !K7 for Europe, UK, Australia, and ROW
This album will be distributed by our good friends at !K7 and their various territory partners in Europe, UK, Australia, and everywhere else in the world outside of North & South America.
If you are a retailer or store with questions about wholesale or are just looking to get some of our records... we'd like to make things as easy for you as possible, please do not hesitate to reach out!!!
