Out Now on streaming platforms: SML's debut LP 'Small Medium Large'
IARC0085
SML
Small Medium Large
Out Now on All Streaming Platforms
"One of the most anticipated albums of Summer 2024" - Pitchfork
“SML’s debut album is a delightful and awe-inspiring experience…” - Glide Magazine
“Nothing short of mesmerizing." - Cultural Attache
“Within the milieu of creative, atmospheric, tradition-defying music termed alternative jazz by default, this is important work.” - SPIN
“...an exuberant album…” - Los Angeles Times
“Blends elements of jazz with funk, electronic music with avant garde fusion, and it grooves like hell…it’s awesome." - Treble
"...dentro la macchina c’è ancora un cuore che pulsa." - Blow Up
In Sheep's Clothing Hifi
Small Medium Large: New quintet continues the legacy of ETA, Los Angeles’ lost experimental music venue
In 2018, LA-based jazz and post-rock guitarist Jeff Parker (Tortoise, Chicago Underground Quartet, Isotope 217) began an extended residency at a small, unassuming neighborhood bar in Highland Park. Held on Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy (ETA), the sessions would become an essential meeting place for a growing community of experimental musicians in Los Angeles exploring jazz, electronics, and improvisational music. Parker would commit the series to vinyl in 2022 with a double LP pulled from 10+ hours of live tape recordings made between 2019-2021 featuring his ETA IVtet, which included drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, and saxophonist Josh Johnson.
Though ETA would close its doors unexpectedly in 2023, the spirit of Parker’s Mondays lives on. The next group, and certainly not the last, to emerge from those sessions is SML (Small Medium Large), a quintet composed of luminaries from Los Angeles’s independent music scene featuring Butterss and Johnson alongside synthesist Jeremiah Chiu (Ariel Kalma, Marta Sofia Honer, Icy Demons), percussionist Booker Stardrum (Amirtha Kidambi, Lisel, Lee Ranaldo, Patrick Shiroishi) and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann (Sam Wilkes, Meg Duffy, Perfume Genius). Their self-titled debut album was released last Friday, June 28th on International Anthem and includes a note in the front insert commemorating ETA as “a bygone bastion of the new West Coast sound.”
Los Angeles Times
Can jazz clubs survive in L.A.? The supergroup SML sure hopes so
The debut album from the L.A. jazz supergroup SML is a thrilling elegy for a dead nightclub.
Over two packed nights last year, the quintet recorded raw, long-form improvisations at the Highland Park jazz club ETA, a cramped bar and restaurant with tough sight lines that fits around 100 people. It wasn’t a perfect room for jazz, yet incredible jazz kept happening there.
“ETA was the kind of place where you really could experiment,” said SML’s bassist Anna Butterss. “They made it easy for us to come up with this group and not feel any external pressure other than what we wanted to do.”
The band’s June LP, “Small Medium Large,” which culled from those performances, couldn’t have happened anywhere else. It never will again. After seven years, ETA closed in December.
Warm Love, Cool Dreams
BIG show in Chicago
Sept 29th @ The Salt Shed
SML is part of an incredible new festival happening at the Salt Shed in Chicago, featuring a ton of heavy hitters including Floating Points, Kelela, and the legendary Jesus Lizard. On Sunday September 29th, SML will do their Chicago debut AND they will also perform as the backing band for dub/reggae queen Sister Nancy (!!!)
((( Photo by Joyce Kim )))
About SML
SML is the quintet of bassist Anna Butterss, synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, percussionist Booker Stardrum, and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann.
Their debut album Small Medium Large was engineered and recorded in stereo direct to Nagra by Bryce Gonzales at ETA, then compiled, arranged, and edited with additional production, recording, and studio composition by SML across their various home studios in 2023.
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.
!!! SML on the Billboard Chart !!!
A nice surprise to see Small Medium Large debuting at #15 on Billboard's Contemporary Jazz Chart !!!
The streaming version of the album only just came out this morning, so this is only for purchases of the physical album or the full album digital download.
Our sincerest thanks to everyone who has directly purchased this album!! Your support is a major boost for these wonderful artists and our label crew :)
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 : )
*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.
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!!!
((( Photo by Brian Guido )))
